Wheeler Farm's Barn

Everyday, I drive by Wheeler Farm on my way to and from work. Wheeler farm is a great family friendly place to visit, and it free, and yo get to learn about, yep, farming.

anyway, a lot of people know this barn from the front side where the enterence ios, but I get to see the back side all the time. I always liked the way that the back side is kind of hidden away, yet still quite prominent in the scenery.

When I shooting HDR images, most high end DSLR cameras have auto-bracketing (basically the camera takes multiple pictures for you at different exposure settings). but mine doesn't have this nice feature so I have to do it manually, which I don't mind because then I know exactly what its doing and I feel more in control. However when you do thid manually, it does take a bit longer. I didn't realize how fast the wind was blowing the clods by that day, and so I when I created the first HDR photo, my sky was in blured motion. I then burned it out and replaced it with one of the original skys for the image above. The image below is the HDR sky. Tell me which you like better.

HDR Tree

This is another of some of my first HDR photos. This is the same tree in my backyard as the previous post, but from a different angle. I loved how the sun was shinning through some of the leaves, and I wanted to try and capture that and all the detail. Only an HDR photo could help me do that. Any other photo would have lost detail in the lights and darks. I hope to shoot more scenery this way.

Due to the way that the HDR photos are processed, there is more "noise" and grain produced, which can be seen on the fence. I tried to use a noise reducing and smoothing program to fix it, but nothing is perfect.

My First HDR

This is my first attempt at an HDR photo. This was taken in my back yard, with my Nikon D40x, using a tripod and manually dialing in the multiple exposures.

Here is one of the more normal originals:


I'm trying out the trial version of Photomatix, but the trial version adds watermarks. I had to erase those out and touch up the image. I hope that with practice, I can do more of this type of photography. I've found a great website that deatails HDR photography. Check out some of his outstanding work at www.stuckincustoms.com

Burning Sky

Back in March '08, we decided to go on a whirlwind trip to Istanbul. It turned out to be one of the best trips I've ever taken. on one of the last days there, we took a ferry out to a set of small islands in the Sea of Marmara. On the way back in the evening, I caught a shot of one of the most spectacular sunsets, I had ever seen. It was twice as amazing due to the reflection from the sea.