Happy Holidays!

My wife decided to decorate the nose of our 4wd sleigh. This is a HDR (High Dynamic Range) composited photo. Put simply, it's a series of images taken at different exposures (brightness) and then merged together. It's a great tool for when lighting conditions are not ideal because the camera can't take in as much light as the human eye can since eyes adapt constantly when you look around. To get the Jeep exposed correctly, the camera would have "blown out" the sky and other highlights. When you want to present a picture the way you saw it, HDR can help accomplish that. I use software to automatically combine the images. But, most of the time some additional photoshop work is needed to pull back elements from one or more of the original shots. Of course, for the purposes of posting on the internet, I have photoshopped the license plate, but this is the final result. I'll post a couple of other shots on Flickr as well.

Festival of Lights

I visited the Grotto in Portland last night with my wife and in-laws for the Festival of Lights. It was a beautiful night without any rain. The amount of lights and decoration reminded me of the Griswald house from the movie "Christmas Vacation". I took a few nice HDR photos with some long exposures. I still have a couple more shots to work on. Here's a shot of the church all lit up and the blue strip on the right side is actually light projected on the elevator shaft that goes up to the top of the cliff. More pictures from the Grotto are on my Flickr Photostream.