The Black Hills....and they were pretty green

Some more from the road trip as promised. We got to spend 2 days in the Black Hills National Forest in Southwestern South Dakota. I'm not sure how they got their name, probably because from a distance and approaching from the east they look Black. Likely due to the dense green pine forests contrasting with the amber waves of grain on the plains below. Just a WAG on my part but you never know.

Regardless the area is really pretty if you are into tall trees, lots of green and mans attempt to carve humongous statues out of mountains. The latter are actually quite impressive and more so when you understand their purpose like I blogged here and here.

All of these images were shot with HDR in mind. I hand held as it was just too hot and laborious to trek the trails with even a light tripod. They were all done RAW, EV was varied +/- 2 stops, merged and converted to HDR with Photomatix. Then they were adjusted further with Photoshop CS2 and further refined with the Virtual Photographer plug in.

Running down the impressionist path.....

"Moon over the Missouri" Pierre, SD

"Moonrise at the docks" Pierre, SD

I had some fun with these images. Big discovery today was that very long time exposures with digital media makes incredible noise. Along the lines of many, many multicolored dots, dashes and crosshatches all over the image much like the color shifts and accentuated grain you get with silver film when you "push" it. (Pushing is a technique where you expose the film at a speed higher than it is rated then increase the development time and temperature to push the film to that new speed).

Another interesting phenom that I was prepared for was that the movement of the moon due to mutha earth's rotation would cause shifts in the position of the moon in the sky when you shoot long exposures. It even got funkier when I shot with HDR in mind as I wound up getting 3 images of the moon in the sky. At least the clone stamp was able to get rid of the extra moons for these images. Another time around I just may let them stay and make them a centerpiece but that's more than my tired brain is ready to handle at the moment.

These images were shot shortly after sunset as the moon was rising at Farm Island State Park in Pierre, South Dakota. I had the camera mounted on a tripod as the exposures ranged from 2 seconds all the way to 30 seconds in the bracketing +/- 2 stops from average exposure. I used Photomatix to merge the 3 raw files to create the HDR file. From there they were denoised, cloned and whatever else needed in Photoshop and converted to 8bit jpeg for here. (Pesky details but out there some geeky type like me likes that info).

Enjoy my little foray into the surreal from the real this morning!

Happy 4th of July!!!

I got to visit Mount Rushmore a couple of times during our stay in the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota.

Interesting place, quite stunning, but a bit of a disappointment too. This was my first visit and some preset ideas and expectations. I can still remember reading about it in my Weekly Reader in elementary school and somehow thought it should be so much bigger. Maybe its those pics on the ashtray souvenir's that my grandmother who was born near there had that set it in my mind they would be so much bigger. Whatever its still pretty cool to see in person.

Anyway, I learned a lot about them during these visits and walking the various trails around the monument. Impressive for what they are. Moving to understand why each president was chosen (am too lazy to type so google Mt Rushmore and get to the National Forest Service's explanation and history for all those details).

I shot several different images of the monument bracketing for HDR. When I get back to a real pc I'll work them through. In the mean time enjoy the images and think about what each of these presidents contributed to our country's growth. Quite an appropriate moment of silence as you prepare to celebrate our nations Independence and freedoms.