Weekly Photo Challenge: Lost in the Details

Lost in the Details.  Any photographer will tell you that is easy to do when it comes to photography.  So interesting that it would be a challenge from WordPress.  There are all kinds of details to think about when it comes to photography.  I chose to focus on the details that you can get in a photograph when using HDR.  Here is one of the exposures that I used in my final image:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/9 0.5s

Here is the image in HDR:

3 exposures together in Photomatix

The difference is subtle but can be seen most in the lower part of the butterfly wings.  There is just more detail there.  I took three separate images that had different exposures and merged them together in Photomatix.

Just for fun, I then made a black and white version:

HDR in Black and White

If you are interested, these HDR images are available for sale in this gallery on my website.

What I’d like to know is which version is your favorite?  If you have a moment and an opinion, please leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Another bee in the series

Last week I posted two bee pictures.  One in sepia and one in color.  This one is in color, but is a bit different:

ISO 64 4mm f/2.8 1/694

It is different because I took it with my iPhone.  Now that it has been edited, it is a very small image, but good enough for this format.  I snapped this picture because I thought it was interesting that the bee and the bug were sharing this flower.  This photo has been edited in Aperture.  I used curves to make it just a bit brighter.  I didn’t want to make it too bright because I liked the green and yellow tones as they turned out in camera.  I also sharpened the image a bit.

Cheers!

Another day, Another bee

I wrote yesterday about a bee that I had photographed and then edited into a sepia image.  The post is here if you would like to take a look.  Today I was looking at another series of bee shots and here is what one of the final images looks like:

ISO 800 135mm 0.67ev f/22 1/125

I think it was the bright yellow of the flower that made me decide to keep this a color image.  I managed to get a pretty sharp photo, even with the movement of the bee and the flower.  I had used my tripod earlier in the shoot, but did not for this particular image.  I think the most challenging thing about this image is the background.  There is just a lot going on.  So, the original image I cropped to try and get some of the background out but still leave enough to convey the scene I was shooting.  In Aperture I corrected this photo a bit using curves, I just wanted to darken the image a little bit.  I have also sharpened the image.

Cheers!