HDR to the rescue in an airplane hangar

The Palm Springs Air Museum is pretty much lit by massive skylights. Makes for bright tops and very dark bottoms of the planes you try to shoot. Also it leaves for dark corners and ceilings. HDR fixes that by blending frames set to expose the highlights and shadows in with that done for the middle tones.

To get these shots I shot "RAW" and bracketed +/- 2 stops...or EV in todays DSLR lingo. I used Adobe's CS5 to do the HDR file generation and tone mapping for "photorealism". If you look close at the images areas that were completely dark such as inside the engine cowl you now have detail. Ditto the tops of the planes that were blown out because of the direct light from the skylights above have detail too. It even helped bring out details from a black plane that was in the shadows. Its all good.

A little travel R&R

This last week was spent in the Palm Springs Area. We love going out there to just hang in the pool and enjoy the desert heat. Yes, August can be beastly but all is right with the world as long as you have a pool to cool off in.

On our radar for a while has been the Palm Springs Air Museum on the airport property. This year we finally made it too there and wish we had done so much earlier. What a great place to spend an afternoon. It is two huge hangar just stuffed with old airplanes from WWII along with a ton of dioramas giving you a terrific snapshot of that era. The docents wound up being extremely engaging and probably the best I have ever seen for bringing history to life...some of them are actually old enough to have served in the war and have their stories to share.

This image was shot with an ultra wide angle lens and stitched together with Adobe's CS5. The photomerge tool there does an amazing job of combining images into one panorama. If you haven't played with it you should.

The Palm Springs Air Museum is located at 745 Gene Autry Trail in Palm Springs. Their web site has a ton more details as to when they are open and any special exhibits going on.

There are quite a few images also in my Palm Springs Air Museum set on flickr HERE.