It's been a while, more High Dynamic Range (HDR)

This poor blog is really looking neglected. I have a post I want to do about a couple of photo shoots I have been wanting to do, but I have not gotten around to them yet. So, instead, I am going to show off some HDR, instead. Honestly, I LOVE HDR. I like the saturation affects, the most. You can get such a wide range of color, in the simplest subject, like this bottle, found by the side of the road:

I love the depth of color. When looking at the properly exposed photo, the bottle is VERY flat and lifeless. The addition of HDR, in this photo, adds a depth that is just missing from conventional photography.

Next up, is one of my new favorites. We were taking a trip to my cousin’s wedding in California, when my 3 year old daughter pipes up and tells us that she has to go potty. There was NOTHING around. This was a VERY desolate piece of road in Oregon, so we pull over on the side of the road in a turnout. She tries to pull her pants down, and go, but has trouble going without a toilet. But, we took advantage of the stop to walk around a bit. I took advantage of it, to take some great shots. The sky was very pretty, with those feathery clouds. I put my circular polarizer on, to get some nice pop to the sky. I then set my camera to Auto Exposure Bracketing. I set the camera on my car, and fired off 3 pictures quickly, trying to keep shaking to a minimum. This was a VERY simple shot to do. Just loaded it in photomatix, adjusted a few sliders, until I was happy, and rendered it. I then cut off a bit of the bottom of the picture, since you could see a piece of my hood in there. That was all the processing this required. I love how it looks:

I just love how HDR can take a mundane photo and it then just pops out at you, when processed correctly.