Weekly Photo Challenge: Tiny

One thing I love about rain is its ability to change the mood of a photo, adding interest almost immediately.

ISO 500 50mm f/5.6 1/80

I saw this scene and felt that the little bit of yellow would make an interesting contrast to the other earthier tones in the photograph. The yellow also lit up the raindrops a bit, helping to highlight them even though they were tiny.

To get this final result, I used exposure bracketing while shooting.  I then combined the three images, identical except for their exposure values, and combined them into an HDR version of the photo.  That might seem like a lot of effort for one photo but it really brought out the detail in the raindrops and the richness of tone that was available in the yellow.

Have you ever taken extra steps in processing what looks like an ordinary photo to uncover additional beauty?  I like the stillness and moody tone of this image, what do you think? To me, the mood is almost more important here than the subject matter. A version of it has also been added to my Picfair portfolio. Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

 

Christmas lights, with rain

It was a bit rainy here over the weekend.  I enjoy catching photos of raindrops, so I went looking for this photo, a raindrop on our Christmas lights.

ISO 200 50mm 3 exposures f/9 1/25

I used my tripod because even though the bush wasn’t going anywhere it was a bit breezy and I knew I was going to try a bracketed exposure to make an HDR image.  For this image the exposures were (-1.67, -2.67, -.67)  I set the exposure dark because it was hazy out, so there was a lot of light.

I then used Photomatix to make my HDR image. I picked a version that I thought brought out some of the rich color tones that were there.  I put the image back into Aperture for some final tweaking.  I cropped and sharpened the image a bit.  I also made the top right corner a bit darker.

I’d like your opinion, would you buy a card or print of an image like this? or does the combination of rain and Christmas not appeal to you at all?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Fall is here

It is getting cooler and the leaves are turning.  It was raining and I got this shot in front of my house:

ISO 320 70mm f/5 1/13

I love the color of fall!

Cheers!