Don't Laugh

Today is very gloomy, lots of clouds, and rain threatening but never quite reaching the ground. The view out the window changes every few minutes, and when I saw some big, puffy clouds, I grabbed my camera and took several bracketed shots. I started at -2EV and ended with +3EV. This was going to be my first try at composing an HDR photograph.

Here is the "normal" auto-exposed photo, which I tweaked in Photoshop using curves and levels. Nothing special.

When I merged six images into the HDR program, and then tweaked them using Topaz, I came up with this:

Yikes! Not what I was expecting, not at all realistic, but it is very dramatic and "artsy," which I do like. The clouds ended up with some pink highlights - I have no idea how that happened. Later, however, when I looked out the window again, I did notice some pink in the clouds and the sky. It was just a lot more real looking than the HDR photo, which seemed to harden that pink color.

I can tell I will be having a lot of fun learning how to do this properly!

Photomerge

I love the Photomerge feature in Photoshop! I took several photos of the lakefront last week, when it was 17 degrees below zero and the lake was steaming in the freezing air. (I did not go outside - this is the view from my apartment!) Using Photoshop, I stitched several images together to make this panoramic view. I started with five images, applied Photomerge, then cropped it, using probably 2.5 images altogether. The final image is approximately 19" x 5.5".

I love the lakefront, and I photograph it a lot. The steam on the lake looked like wisps of clouds, which fascinated me. It was so peaceful and beautiful - but I was so glad to be indoors that day!