Road Tripping ::

I did a road trip up to Fort Payne, Alabama searching for scenes to photograph and came across several that were of interest.



This is another HDR photo utilizing 7 different exposures. The photograph was processed in Photomatix which is my program of choice for tone mapping HDR images. I've used the Photoshop HDR processor, but I've never been satisfied with the results.

Toilet Paper In The Tree ::

Although this is not a HDR image I have been shooting more of them lately as well as using my tripods and monopod more. At times I will shoot 3 to 5 HDR shots hand held outside on a sunny day, but I've decided that this is not the optimum way to approach the situation and I've really come to appreciate the monopod.

So, what I wanted to say about this image is that I drove by the scene the day before I took this photograph and decided it was worthy of a HDR try, but, unfortunately, the day was pretty windy as well as sunny and when I processed the photographs there was far too much ghosting in the toilet paper on the tree. I should also add that there was much more toilet paper on the tree when I tried the HDR photograph! I was in the same area the next day which was overcast I decided to just make a normal exposure. I think it turned out ok. At least the quarter horse farm sign is not in heavy shadow!

A New Holga Photograph

Posted near a local convenience store although I can't imagine why anyone would trespass at this location!

The Hebron Volunteer Fire Department ::

HDR photographs taken on 09/11/11. I've begun to experiment more with HDR photography and I've decided that the use of a tripod, which I extremely dislike, will be mandatory although these photographs were taken with the use of a monopod. These were a bracket of 3 images, each 1 stop apart. I've since decided to try 5 shots at .7 stop apart. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to try this spread out this weekend.

I've had pretty good success with a 3 shot spread, hand-held, but the tripod should yield more consistent results.

Snatching Victory From Defeat ::

I shot this several years ago when I had my Nikon D50. I ran across this scene and shot it with the 18-55mm lens with a polarizing filter as well as a lens hood so I got some pretty significant vignetting. For some reason I saved the image to the computer without really giving it much thought although I did look at it once in a while. This morning I was looking for something different to post and decided to play around with this in OnOne Software's PhotoTools. Here is the final result:



And here is the untouched original:



Quite a bit of difference!

Dot's Dairy Den ::

New Hope, Alabama.

Another Holga Photograph ::

Earlier this evening I added another 4 gigs of ram to my computer so I've been doing a bit of speed testing so I worked a bit on this Holga image. The original negative was scanned to a 16 bit digital file of around 220 megs and then converted to black and white in Photoshop. I'm pretty happy with the speed gain from the extra ram.

A Holga Image ::

From a few weeks ago:



I don't know where the rest of the house is gone to, but it was cleaned up pretty well.

Still Working Through Some Computer Issues ::

But I'm getting close to being through with them. In the meantime here is something from a couple of weeks ago:

Not Lost ::

I'm still around--I've just been incredibly busy as well as adding a new hard drive to the computer which necessitated reloading the os as well as all of my programs. I'm still working on bringing it back up to speed. I also haven't been doing much in the way of photography this summer.

A Holga Photograph ::

This one is from earlier in the year. I really haven't had much time to do any shooting lately. The older I get the more the heat seems to zap my energy!

Ready To Fly? ::

I've had my eye on this old barn with the Huntsville Airport sign on the side for quite some time, but only today did I have a chance to take the photograph. Actually, I've had several chances before, but there always seemed to be something that was not quite right. Normally I try my best not to wait over a period of days, or months, to take a photograph, but this scene is near where I live and I wasn't really worried about it disappearing.



There are also two interesting little cemeteries on this country side road.

A HDR Result ::

Taken a couple of months ago in a cemetery off the beaten path between Pulaski and Fayetteville, Tennessee.



A former co-worker who passed away back in January had his ashes spread in the beautiful cemetery!

Memorial Day, 2011

Planting time ::

The farmers have been busy in the past couple of weeks trying to get their seeds in the ground, as have I. I have corn and okra peeking up out of the soil along with my tomatoes, squash, zucchini and peppers. Now I just have to keep the deer away!

A Clear Day In January ::

I really thought that I had taken this shot back during the summer, but a check of the metadata definitely places this at January of this year.

A New Holga Photograph ::

Taken just a few days ago.



The flowers are there as a small memorial to a lady who drove off the road late one night, clipped the side of the tree, and her car went into the lake. No one saw the accident happen, but the next day someone driving by happened to see the antenna sticking up out of the water, but it obviously was too late.

A Flag ::

I don't think I've posted a flag photograph in a while, so here's one from last month:

From Yesterday Morning ::

Here is my latest HDR attempt. I think that my expectations were too great on my first HDR tries and I made several mistakes, the first being that I expected to reproduce a far too great contrast range, and I produced too many bracketed shots. I had been shooting as many as 9 stops, but lately I have consciously limited myself to 3 and that seems to work much better.



Now, if I can just discipline myself to use a tripod! I've been experimenting hand-held lately and I can definitely see limitations with that approach.

Yard Sale ::

I've been some more experimentation with HDR and this is one result from a couple of weeks ago:



Until a couple of years ago this building housed a pawn shop until it was robbed one afternoon and the lady who owned and ran the shop decided that the risk of further robberies just wasn't worth the reward so she immediately shut down. I can't say that I blame her!