Photomatix

Photo: A pickup truck parked out on a frozen Europe Lake in Northern Door County, WI.

I captured this image while standing in the middle of a frozen lake up in Door County over the weekend. There were a few vehicles out there with adventurous ice fisherman braving the elements and enjoying a popular winter pastime in this part of the country.

Even though there were entire pickup trucks and minivans driving around on this ice, we were still a little leery about trekking out ourselves. Seeing as I grew up playing hockey my whole life, you’d think being out on a frozen lake would come natural, but playing it safe seemed to be the order of the day. Looking back, I almost wish I had brought my skates like I did the previous winter trip up north.

Photo: An HDR image of the scoreboard at the Allstate Arena, in Rosemont, IL

Not exactly another hockey image from last week, but something I felt like sharing today. I captured the source images for this at a game in November in between periods. Seeing that there’s not a lot of opportunities to shoot HDR at a sporting event while the action is going on, I looked elsewhere.

Now, some HDR images can be taken handheld, but wasn’t taking any chances with the indoor lighting I was in. Since tripods are frowned upon in sports arenas, I was lucky enough to have seats right between the railing separating our section from the one in front of us. That, and my friend the 2-second delay timer, and I had an instant tripod.

I shot this with my Canon 20D, which its tiny LCD viewer (when compared to my Rebel XSi) didn’t give me too good of an indication whether the frames I took would work. In the end, I think it came out okay.

What do you think?

An HDR shot I attempted because I wanted to capture something decent with this view, but the lighting of just a single exposure wasn’t right. The grassy area and trees in the foreground, which I ended up cropping out anyway, where just too dark and the clouds above me (also cropped) weren’t helping the overall balance.

Still, I was really stunned with the level of detail that I still managed to capture in the valley at the base of the mountains, and even the ridges in the slopes as well. I did more work than usual in post and with TopazAdjust to bring out some detail and take out some noise, and was very pleased.

Of course, it’s hard to get a feel for the image with this currently resolution, so click on it for a link over to Flickr and select the option to see it full size.

An HDR look at the same building in Ephraim, Door County that I shot a close-up of earlier in the year. A rustic and colorful structure that’s begging to be photographed in high dynamic range if there ever was one.

Photo: Looking down from the 20th floor at the Hyatt Maui Regency early in the morning.