Show prep...the reason for the extended silence! This is the time of year for the big crunch getting ready for the big Celebrate the Art's here in Monrovia's Library Park. Between printing, matting and helping to organize the show there has been precious little time for the good stuff...like going out and shooting.

Come see me! Come see the great art in the park, even take in all the goodies at the Festival which runs this weekend, October 6 & 7 in our Library Park located at the north end of Old Town Monrovia. This is a "Fine Art Event" so plan on seeing some really nice original art as well as talk with the artist direct.

This show is going to be one of the better in terms of the talent presented. Many of my favorites like Luke and Ginger Van Hook and Connie Towns are returning to the festival this year. Visit them in their "living room" set up at the north end of the park. We also have some really exciting new artists showing with us. One is pointillist Barbara J Carter, another is painter and author Rhonda Lynn.

Just in case you forgot, the Monrovia Art Festival Association is a non-profit organization based here in Monrovia that is dedicated to bringing art to the community as well as art education.

See you this weekend, and pardon the silence!

How dry I am?

It's interesting how things can change so fast. So Cal had one of the wettest winters on record with storms dropping rain measured in feet not inches in the San Gabriel Mountains during January, February and early March 2005. 2006 was near normal, this last year ended with it being the driest winter since record keeping began in the area. (We measure our year for rain from July to June hence 3 years being referenced).

The San Gabriel River went from rushing torrents, to steady river to finally being turned off this spring. It is so dry that the land has become dust inches deep. Kind of scary, but the western states have been in a very persistent drought the last 9 or so years so we were lucky to get what we got I suppose.

Walking the river yesterday I noticed for the first time how bad it has actually gotten in terms of dryness. Cacti, in particular the "beaver tail" are drying up. Dessication isn't pretty. Once plump and green they are slowly withering and yellowing. Wrinkling like some old prune.

Fortunately these are very drought resistant and even if the mother plant dies there are ample seeds and rootlets to bring the area back once water returns. It may take years to repopulate the washes and ravines but the historical cycle for the area is very wet followed by many years of drought. They adapted to it. Just sad to see it all drying up and dying off when it was so green a few years ago.

Enjoy the pics. Shot raw, 3 files bracketed 2 stops. Post processed with HDR and Tone mapped with the Photomatix programs. After that its dumbed back down to jpeg for final processing in virtual photographer and resized for here.

Fall is coming....and we're getting some color


Before I forget there is another Artist Meet and Greet to go along with the extended run at California Wine and Cheese. What better way to spend a nice end of summer evening than with a nice glass of wine, some cheese, conversation and art?

The details: The details Friday Sept 21, 2007 5:30PM to 8:30PM. California Wine and Cheese, 115 W Foothill Blvd, Monrovia CA 91016. They are located ½ block west of Myrtle Avenue on the north side of the street.

Today I took off late morning for some walking and shooting along the San Gabriel River. (Yes, folks we really do walk in LA). This time of year the color of light starts shifting to the yellow end of the spectrum and the shadows start to lengthen.

I like shooting on the bridge this time of year as the plant material and the bridge make an interesting series of contrasts. First is the man vs nature, precise versus feathery edges, textural differences and the hard cool colors vs the warming fall colors of nature. All good and plenty to keep the eye entertained. The bridge is also a great way to work on composition using large graphic elements to work with the natural elements framing each other while violating each others space. It's all good.

I shot this short series RAW bracketing +/- 2 stops from center average metering knowing I would post process with Photomatix HDR generation and tone mapping. After that process was done they were converted back down to 8 bit jpeg with minimal compression and run through virtual photographer. I like the way these turn out as the process of preserving shadow and highlight detail allows the other elements in contrast to stand out more.

Anyway enjoy the 3 versions of Encanto Park Foot Bridge.

Urban Art in the wild

Living at the edge of the LA Metro area I do have a lot of wilderness close by. I'm not the only who ventures a few blocks from home to enjoy the outdoors.

In Duarte at their Encanto Park there is an old railroad bridge that connects it with the San Gabriel River Trail that you can use to bike all the way to Long Beach if you desire. The bridge is all nicely paved and now that the river has been off for nearly a year (not sure who or why they did it, but its LA Baby and you roll with nature being shut off) so its possible to walk under it. For years even when the river ran the Duarte East Side Gang and some other groups have been decorating and putting their own mark on the undersides of the bridge. I think DESG is gone as the incredible murals are painted and tagged over. Sad to see their art go as the tagging usually doesn't bode well.

I do have to admit that this is my favorite time of year to shoot. Now through the end of October the sun isn't as high and the resulting color shifts to the redder side of the spectrum really accentuate the warm tones of a scene. Add in the natural fading of greens as fall approaches things really warm up a bit. Late afternoon and early morning this is most noticeable and is the reason I do so much shooting at those times of day.

I shot these bracketed with 2 stops over/under exposure using the EOS 20d with an ultra wide angle to capture as much of the scene as possible and add some linear distortion. I used the 3 RAW files to generate HDR files that were tonemapped and run through Virtual Photographer to get to the final images seen here.

See me in a few locations this weekend:

My run at the California Wine and Cheese has been extended for another couple of weeks as the artist who was scheduled to install after me has run into difficulties. Good for me as I get to have my stuff hanging and being viewed instead of packed up and warehoused until the next big show I do in October.

Added bonus and a complete surprise is that I have been sponsored sight-unseen by a merchant in nearby Claremont to show at tonight's Art Walk. My sponsor information:
Tattle Tales, 309 Yale Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711, 909/621-4192.

Tattle Tales is a kids clothing store but my stuff is pretty inoffensive. It's a nice start as I have heard good things about the Claremont Art Walk. Their Art Walk is different in that you don't have to be a member of an artists association, jurying is pretty liberal and there is no fee for the artist. Yes, no fee. Turns out their Art Walk is driven by the merchants association and they see it as a way to attract traffic into their downtown. This should be interesting. I may toss something up on Blogging.la after I tonight if it turns out to be something that could interest the whole Metro area.

Salvage isn't always a dirty word!

Today I continued working with the Photomatix Tone Mapping plug-in for Photoshop CS. When I first made the ditch to all digital I did a lot of my work in jpeg only mostly out of the fear of RAW shooting and wanting to get a handle on one variable at a time with the digital SLR.

Going into the process I knew that JPEG was a "losey" way to shoot as details are lost during the compression process even if you do minimal compression. I knew as well that adjusting the contrast could only do so much in terms of capturing details across the grey scale. I did a lot of bracketing only to find the contrast range of the sensor wound up leaving me with shadows absent a lot of detail when I got the mid-tones and highlights right. Just a devil in the process you have to know and learn to work with. I knew too that cold also affected how a sensor reacts to light which affects your final image.

Why I chose a place like Yosemite to experiment with the variables leaving a lot at risk, I don't know. (Probably has something to do with my habit of tossing caution to the wind and running with scissors more often than not).

Sadly, at the bottom of the learning curve I lost a lot of images learning how the sensor and camera worked together as many of my images had too many extremes to really capture the essence and spirit of the place I was trying to show.

Those frames are completely workable with the help of Photomatix Tone_mapping. I can maintain my highlights and mid-tones and still bring in all the richness of the shadows. It's this sort of salvage that makes it possible to bring back the images you shot with all the detail and emotion you wanted with the help of technology. Of course in hindsight if I had shot it all RAW in the beginning I would have had even more pixel-by-pixel data to work with, but that's part of the early learning curve with a new tool.

Of course when I shot this set along the Merced River in the meadows in the heart of Yosemite Valley I got the added bonus of warm sunlight as the sun was lowering on the horizon. The natural color shifts were "warming" up of moving towards the yellow/red end of the spectrum contrasted nicely with the gray/blue granite cliffs that were picking up the blue from the open sky above.

End result I got great contrast between warm living trees and cold granite. This played nicely as well with the softer, rounded forms of the trees contrasting with the jagged edges of the mountains too. Lots of visual interest to draw you into the photo and feel Yosemite later afternoon during the winter.

Enjoy my two view of the Merced River in the Yosemite Valley!

Eastern Sierra's....our California Fall Color Central


No secret most of my neighbors are transplants from "back east" and bemoan and grudge about the lack of seasons and "fall color". They just don't know where too look. LA as plenty of color. The Eastern Sierra's especially around Bishop up to Mammoth will rival anything you can find elsewhere in the country and of course you get the Sierra's as a back drop to it all. I enjoy the color and contrast between the vegetation and mountains. Can't wait to get back up there again at the end of September to soak it all in and shoot to my hearts content.

Spent a little time working some images from 2 years ago with tonemapping. I took jpeg files and converted them to 32 bit and then ran them through the photomatix tonemapping plug-in. That brought back all the detail in the shadows without the whole picture going flat. I opted this route as the CS2 filters for shadow/highlight tend to flatten too much.

After that was done I converted them back to 8bit, ran them through virtual photographer to clean up the skies and give them that old timey kodachrome look with the accentuated warm tones. I like this step as the final punch in the process as it brings back some of life in the final image that tonemapping can't do alone.

On a final note, am working on getting a spot at the Claremont CA "First Friday" Art Walk. If I can pull it of I will put all the details up here.

You never know what's going to be a hit....

A couple of my past favorite images actually wound up being the most commented on at the Meet and Greet last night at California Wine and Cheese. I'll be showing there another 2 weeks, if you want to go see it do so. If you would like to meet and discuss the work let me know as I am minutes away and able to take the time.

Thanks to all who came to support, old friends (Ruth and Coop), New friends (Will), old coworkers and new found artist pals. It was fun. The conversation about the art of photography vs the technical stuff was fun...thanks Coop.

The best part for me still is talking with people about what I do and learning what struck a cord with them. My series using a couple of different techniques to pay homage to the old Dutch Masters and their wonderful skies didn't escape anyone.

The surprise was that the group from Bodie still strike a cord with so many people. Natural lighting and capturing old building in their state of "arrested decay" has been something I've always enjoyed doing especially when I can convey its prior joi de vivre and human connection. (I have to admit the term "arrested decay" was coined by Will's friend who joined him on the Gold Line bike ride to the event but worth using, including as a tag). Nice to know something I do strikes a cord with so many especially when it's something I like doing.

Anyway, its another busy day in the space behind the garage. A few things to prep and get ready for tonight's Art Walk sponsored by the Monrovia Art Festival Association from 6:30 to 9:30 on Myrtle Avenue in the heart of Old Town. Map here.

Anyway enjoy "Henhouse Eggs" and "Final Game Done".

Just a little sampling of what I have on show at the California Wine and Cheese shop here in Monrovia. The piece is a watercolor photograph titled "Pietra Blanca Lighthouse".

The artist "Meet and Greet" will take place Friday August 24, 2007, 5:30PM - 8:30PM. Tell the owner Tom Duggan or his bartender that you are there for the art and they will have available a specially priced Red or White wine for you.

California Wine and Cheese is a new business here in Monrovia that fills a gap missing in adult oriented evenings out since the Wine of the Month Club closed down its tasting room. They specialize in as the name implies the unique wine and cheeses of California. It's quite the deal, they have "flights" of usually 4-6 wines from a particular, grape, region or vintner available for purchase. Tom and his staff tell you about the wine, what makes it special and how to detect the difference. And to satisfy the tummy as well as the pallet they offer up cheese platters tailored to your "flight" so you learn about that kind of paring. It makes for a terrific night now...now if we can get them to come up with a dessert offering to finish the flight it would be perfect.

Apologies for the lack of new stuff to entertain but the last couple of weeks have been murder around here between weather and migraine triggers.

I got strung up today...in that good happy kinda way!

I finally got installed at the California Wine and Cheese today. A bit later than planned but that was outside the control of myself and the owner Tom Dugan. It was due to our waiting for the museum style "arakawa" hanging system to arrive. Its there and set up which makes installations so very easy.

All that said...I wound up bringing along a piece that Tom liked and noted on his site the following: "We do not know which works he has chosen, but my favorite on his blog site is "Seine Dusk." Just incredible colors. " Well Tom if you read this am glad to have accommodated, even if by accident for you as it is a piece I like too. I thank you as well for giving me a chance to showcase my work in your establishment!

Most of the pieces have been here and maybe even shown as a work in progress on my flickr page. I can't say that I have any new pieces to debut as those were done the end of July at the Art Walk. What I am bringing is a range of work illustrating from traditional photographs, into HDR and into my more impressionistic watercolor photographs.

The catalog:

"Rose Blossom" - photograph

"Game Over, Bodie Hotel" - photograph

"Henhouse Eggs" - photograph/digital art

"Bodie Blue Window" - photograph/digital art

"Chapel of St John the Evangelist" - HDR Photograph

"Desert Sunrise" - watercolor photograph

"Pietra Blanca Lighthouse" - watercolor photograph

"Siene Dusk" - HDR watercolor photograph

"Not James Dean" - HDR photograph

"Old Faithful" - HDR Photograph

Now for the fun stuff, the reception is set for Friday August 24, 2007. As soon as I have the details I'll let you know more but we are looking at something like a 5-9PM to catch all the after work crowd. I also understand one of the local wineries based in Sierra Madre may have a representative there that night so this could make for a lot more fun.

If you want a personal notecard with the details leave me a not with your email addy or snail mail!

Tonemapping isn't just for HDR

While researching the HDR and Tonemapping I stumbled across a rather interesting flickr group. Interesting if not belligerent, in my not so humble opinion, regarding tonemapping of single shot images and displaying the same in their group. It is their group, but sheesh.... Their deal is landscapes only, never HDR which is created by blending multiple exposures of the same frame.

Interesting concept, the tonemapping of single exposures that is to say. Their results in many ways move into the surreal as well. It certainly has its place with portraits and documenting the human condition as much as it does in doing landscapes. Maybe better than HDR as you don't have to worry about a person moving and losing your registration, not that I don't use that to my advantage at times. Just variations on the possibilities.

They have a brief discussion and the photos posted to this group are worked in Photomatix from a RAW file as part of the conversion process to tiff or jpeg for final working. This is different than using Adobe Photoshop CS2 highlight/shadow tool and the results are pretty amazing.

Today was one of those days where I had enough of the task stuff like filing, errand running, mounting and sleeving prints and I just wanted to experiment.

I had several images shot while taking one of the Thames River boats from Greenwich to London that were shot late in the day. I shot raw using the metered average exposure. Problem with that is late in the day you have very long shadows with extreme contrast. The large amounts of sky and reflections of the same off the water wounded up exposing them beautifully but left the shadows very dark. I couldn't shoot them with HDR as the between the forward motion of the boat and the rocking would have yielded frames too far apart to ever register successfully for an HDR image. I wasn't too happy with the results and as such never did much with them. Until now.

The before and after exposures below are the original frame converted to jpeg and sized for here. It had no corrections done and serves as the base image for comparison. The image below is the tonemapped version of the same RAW file. I used Photomatix Tonemapping to accomplish that task. Note there is detail across the board in the shadow areas, much cleaner color yet the sky has its own luminosity that helps the whole image work. Different perspective of Big Ben and certainly much nicer too look at. (Can you tell what time it was when I took the picture?)

Regardless, enjoy the picture and I highly recommend taking one of the commuter ferry's while in London to soak in more of the city and of course get you to Greenwich to see all that is there to explore. More leisurely than the train, but more colorful given your captains are not tour guides and give you a much better and crustier version of the history as you float along.

Actually, I probably overdid it this last week getting ready for the Art Walk and for being hung at the California Wine and Cheese shop here in good old Monrovia this coming weekend. I suspect its my old "friend" CFS raising its ugly head but I'll shake it off quick. Have too...I have to hang Saturday.

Isn't the take on the Hollywood sign a riot! I can't take credit for finding the sight. My blog pal Julia from blogging.la posted it on metroblogging this morning. Have fun with the sign am off to get some dinner done and off to bed early today. You can make your own HERE!

Art Walk Premiering....HDR and other explorations
It's crunch time here in the space behind the garage. All those images I've worked on the last few months have to be printed, matted/mounted and ready for a show this weekend at the MAFA Art Walk this weekend here in Old Town Monrovia.

This show I'm going to be showing primarily my HDR work as it has been the focus of much of what I have been exploring the last few months. I've blathered on about it quite a bit, and to my pleasant surprise what I have done so far with it has been well received by viewers and collectors. Can't be too far off the mark and certainly something I will continue to work with as it gives me tremendous satisfaction. Just nice to get some reactions from time to time.

The image here is one of the ones I will be premiering that night. It is different from the others in that its intentionally taken down the extreme path to be very impressionistic much like the entire movement in painting early in the last century. The others being shown are very real or surreal but not as painterly as this one.

"Siene Dusk" was shot just as the sun dipped below the horizon our first evening in Paris this spring. I shot it from the Pont de Bir Hakeim near La Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower...now you have had your French lesson for the day). I shot it with HDR in mind which means 3 bracketed exposures. I used Photomatix to generate the HDR file from the 3 raw files the camera generated. I used Photomatix as well to do the tone mapping as I prefer it to the version bundled with CS2. Once the tonemapping was done I converted it down to an 8 bit file, worked with color, fine tuned shadows, ran it through the virtual photographer and some arty filters to get this impressionistic view.

I will be at the Paint N Play Studio and Gallery that night as I am one of their featured artists that night. PnP will also be hosting an artists reception, open to the public and FREE concurrent to the art walk. Please feel free to stop in and chat with me!

The details on the art walk.

Monrovia Art Festival Association Art Walk

July 28, 2007 6:30Pm to 9:30PM

400-500 Block South Myrtle Avenue, Monrovia, CA 91016

Watch Metroblogging for the full blog on the entire Art Walk that is set to run 10AM Friday.

Love the detail preservation in HDR...

"Chapel of St John the Evangelist", Tower of London 4/9/07

For your enjoyment another installment on the European vacation shot RAW with HDR in mind this last spring. It is the Chapel of St John the Evangelist within the main tower at the center of the complex named the White Tower that dates back to the first millennium. The Chapel is on the first floor and is considered to be one of the most perfect examples of Norman architecture in all of London.

At the time I saw the chapel I knew it would benefit from HDR's ability to preserve details across a wide spectrum of light intensity. For this image I opted to use only 2 exposures choosing to allow some rich blacks void of most detail to add to the romantic view of the chapel. After the HDR file was generated with Photomatix the same programs tone mapping option was used to condense the final file into one a printer and monitor can reproduce. I opted to go very natural as well rather than the surreal. After that I cleaned up the color balance with CS2 and did the final adjustments with Virtual Photographer.

Why do I bring this up now you may ask? Well Paint n Play gallery here in Monrovia has a customer who wanted a companion piece to the "Abandoned Church Paris" that I blogged about here before. Actually they've been quite popular and I will have additional pieces for sale and display at the coming Art Walk on July 28th from 6-9PM on Myrtle Avenue in Old Town Monrovia.

It's Old Timey Postcard Time

"Sour Lake"

"Old Faithful"

"Dragons Mouth"

"Old Faithful Wide View"

Working with HDR is fun. In a way the 3 RAW files needed to produce the HDR File for tonemapping isn't that much different than the way the early Kodachromes were deconstructed into color separations and reassembled for printing in magazines. The National Geographic was the first of the publications to use this technology to bring to us all the world had to offer in beautiful saturated color.

With the opening of Route 66 and the increased automobile ownership lead to the roadtrip family vacation. How else better to share with those left behind the amazing things you saw and tell them about your trip than to drop them a postcard.

Early postcards had wonderfully overly exaggerated colors and saturation. Today's project was to take HDR generated files, tonemap them to exaggerate things, then took it a step further with virtual photographer. So here you go, 4 examples or variations on the postcard theme.

Stark realism....HDR keeps the details clean

"Cody Sunset", Cody, Wyoming

"Fallen Soldiers" Big Horn County, Montana

"Custer National Cemetery" Big Horn County, Montana

Here we go shots taken at the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument and Custer National Cemetery. Pretty impressive, Col Custer sure had an ego and overestimated his own abilities which lead to the massacre by the Indians who were trying to protect their freedoms on their own land. (Not trying to be political here, but for the Indians from the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes this was an attempt to preserve their way of life outside the reservation system). More info can be gathered also from the official National Park System here.

And with that note...on July 5th we left Little Big Horn and ended the day in Cody in time to watch a storm develop over Yellowstone as the sunset.

All of these were shot with an ultrawide angle lens, bracketed with HDR in mind. The RAW files were combined into HDR files with the aid of Photomatix and adjusted with the Tonemapping plug in for CS2. The final images were created with the aid of Virtual Photographer.

Sunsets and HDR, too good to be true in controlling demons.

"Amber Waves" Sheridan, WY

"Under the Thunderhead" Sheridan, WY

"Just Before Sunset" Sheridan, WY

"Gathering Storm", Sheridan, WY

I got a rare treat, well rare for this California guy, while in Wyoming over the July 4th Holiday. We have 3 kinds of sky in the summer, "June Gloom" or overcast grey, Blue or Brown. To get to see clouds in the sky at sunset is a treat, to watch thunderstorms growing is an even bigger treat. So the evening of July 4th after dinner and waiting for dark to arrive for fireworks I grabbed the trusty camera and went shooting the storm building to the west over the Big Horn Mountains. Very cool watching the grey build and have the sun sneak below and send shimmering golden rays across the valley floor. Swatting the flies and mosquitoes wasn't fun but it too is part of being in the country.

I shot all four images with an ultra wide angle lens to capture as much of the sky as possible, to exaggerate the immenseness of the sky. The low sun added the drama. I shot 3 exposures knowing I'd use HDR to bring back the detail in the shadows and the ultra bright highlights created by the sun. After that its tonemapping with Photomatix and then cleaned up with PhotoshopCS2 and the Virtual Photographer plug in. End result sunset landscapes with details in the sky and shadows controlling those demons is so much easier when you can use HDR to real them in.

Not exactly an impressionist paint, not exactly pure photographs, but pleased with the results. Enjoy!

Race you for a pink slip?

Our boatThe other teams boat

Jillian, Will and his wife Susan brought up the rear

Not the best score but we still kicked our opponents arse

NOT doing the Hula to Don Ho's "Tiny Bubbles"

Lifes adventures can't be passed up. As I run through he mid-life years I'm bound and determined add a few extra adventures to my belt before I decide to slow down. (Sounds good but I'm way too hyper to slow down).

This weeks adventure was to attend the LA Lotus Festival in Echo Park. More specifically I was a rower in the Dragon Boat races and part of the Metroblogging LA Team. This is one of those events that celebrates one culture and the the diversity of Los Angeles a city I am quite proud to call home.

Anyway the race...we kicked ass. We raced a team from another division and it felt good to beat them but a good 40 feet...maybe 3 boat lengths. The first leg across the lake we were mismatched by rowing ability and coupled with a good head wind wound up making a big curve off course and lost a lot of our huge lead of 100 feet trying to correct it. We got it all back together to make a solid run to the finish line in time (well sorta) to Shannon's beating of the drum and the chanting "blog, blog, blog...". It was fun, a nice diversion to the weekend and a great way to meet new people that can only enrich our lives in the deal. Can't wait till next year to do this again!

final tidbit...these pics were all taken with the trusty old che-ez snap in all its glorious .3 megapixels!

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!