Baseball inspired HDR work

My neighbor Craig is a pro-baseball scout and batting coach. He has a client who has season tickets to the Dodger's game. Those seats are 16 rows up from the 1st base dugouts. Last night he passed the tickets on to Craig and I got an invite to attend. Primo seats at one of my favorite games. "The Freeway Series" with the LA Dodgers and LA Angels.

It was a pretty good game. Dodgers were on top of it all pretty good, actually very much on top their game as the final score was 6-0...yes the Angels didn't score a single run. I can't remember the last time the Angels were so completely shut down like that. I almost feel sorry for the Angels' fans that drove up from the OC to watch the game.

As always I bring the camera along and shoot. One of my fascinations still is HDR and how movement is recorded during the conversion from 3 RAW files shot in sequence to an HDR file. Tone mapping allows you to go real or surreal. I went both with these, though one is definitely more on the surreal side. Final images are post processed with Virtual Photographer. Regardless of the options available I still go to the exaggerated saturation of the early Kodachromes.

making a mess art...well sorta

I don't know what it is about this yard but the story behind it puzzles me. I've actually been by it hundreds of times and never paid much attention to the ever growing piles. What is wrong with the residents? Ill health? Packrats? What does the inside look like I wonder as well? Is this a giant swap meet waiting to happen? Why hasn't anyone stolen anything out of the yard. If someone did steal from the pile would anyone notice? Why hasn't code enforcement noticed it yet?

It certainly is unusual for the neighborhood. It was not what one would expect. It just begged to be made important and surreal. I think I did that more so with the opening image. The fence keeping it all in is just a nice touch.

These were shot bracketed, the RAW files combined via Photomatix HDR file generation. The HDR file was tonemapped using Photomatix. Virtual Photographer was then used to adjust the final image.