Portland Light

While this is not a particularly unique photograph of the Portland Lighthouse in Maine, it is one of my favorites.  As some of you know, my wife is very intrigued by lighthouses, so we try to stop in at different lighthouses whenever we are in the neighborhood.  This one was taken a few years ago on a trip through New England.  This is one of the most picturesque lighthouses on the east coast.  We were here the evening before but the weather was miserable and rainy and not really photogenic.  So the next day we got up early  and backtracked about 30 miles to try again.  I was glad we did because the conditions were very nice.

Lake Mission Viejo Panoramic

This is fun to do.  This photo is actually made from a series of eight separate photos that have been "stitched" together in Photoshop to create a single wide photograph.  This was taken at Lake Mission Viejo looking north towards Saddleback Mountain in the background. 

Empty Beach

I visited Lake Mission Viejo a couple of weeks ago to check out the sunset and took this photo using my 16-35mm lens set at 16mm f/22.  I was trying to convey the emptiness of the beach.  This was processed as a single image HDR and then I added some vignetting.  I'd be interested in any feedback you might have.  Do you like this look or is it over the top?

Ogle Cabin View

Here's an example where HDR photography really allows you to capture the highlights and shadows of your scene.  This was taken inside an old cabin in the Smokies looking out a window towards another cabin.  If this was taken with one exposure you would only be able to properly expose for either the bright outside or the darker inside the cabin, but not both.

Morning Dew

Here's a colorful shot I took in my backyard last Fall.  I used my 100mm macro set to 1/125 sec at f 3.5.  The wide f-stop really shortened the depth of focus and blurred the background flowers and just let the colors show through. 

Old Town Orange

Old Town Orange is a nice old neighborhood in Orange County, California.  There are a lot of old Craftsman style houses in this very well kept neighborhood.  In my opinion, this is one of the nicest examples of what can be found there.  I took three separate images of this scene covering an exposure range of 5 stops and then combined them together using Photomatix Pro software.   I then cropped it to eliminate the power wire and car in the driveway.  Below is the middle exposure of the three images taken.

You can see that the final image at the top has detail in the shadows and sky that is missing in the middle exposure image.  That is the advantage of HDR processing as it pulls that missing detail out of the other two images in the three image series.

Life Boat

This is a photo I took in Dana Point Harbor last year.  I like the symmetry of the boat and its reflection.  The only processing I did was a curves adjustment for contrast and some sharpening.