Experimenting with HDR

When I got my new camera last August, I noticed it had an option for HDR (High Dynamic Range) so I thought I would give it a try.  HDR photography is where you take several shots with different exposures of the same scene and put them together, one over the other.  That way you can incorporate all of the exposures together to result in a photo with more even lighting.  My camera's HDR setting will automatically put three different exposures together.  This is definitely the easy way! This is especially helpful with landscape scenes where the land is darker and the sky is lighter.  If you do it right, you end up with a photo that looks more like real life, but you can over do it too!  I still have a lot to learn, I've only tried it out three times in all!

These three pictures are ones I took on an early heavy-dew June morning.  My favorite would be the one above, as the wheat isn't quite as blue looking as the other two.  I also like the framing of the trees and the clouds.  I did a slight edge vignette to help draw the eye in to the center of the photograph.

Because the dew was so heavy, it caused the wheat to have a "frosted" look, even though there wasn't any frost.

This one also has a slight vignette.

 I'm definitely looking forward to the options HDR presents, along with the challenge of learning how to use it better to achieve the look I want.

Have you ever used HDR before?  Which picture is your favorite of the three?  What's your favorite thing to photograph?

Flowers of Spring

After a long winter, the thing I look forward to the most in the spring is all of the new flowers popping up here and there.  It's as if everything was asleep during the long cold winter and is just waking up, vibrant and newly revived for the coming months of summer.  There's nothing quite like all of the new life surrounding you to get your creative juices flowing!  This usually ends up in an over abundance of flower pictures, but of course not all of them are worth posting.  Here are a few that I was pleased with the way the focus, composition, and subject matter all came together to make a complete story.  Although each one of these definitely has room for improvement.

Wild Cherry Blooms

I think these are wild cherries, but I'm not positive.  So don't go eating a bunch of them! ;)

 Periwinkle Ground Cover 

These were growing around an old house I took pictures of this spring.

Rose Vines by the Pond

It was starting to get dark while we were fishing at the pond and I loved the way the colors were starting to change as the sun was going down.  I had to snap a few photos of the green rose leaves on the red vines.

What's your favorite part about spring?

A Busy Junco

During the winter months we like to fill the bird feeder and watch as all of the "overwintering" birds help themselves to dinner.  We always have a lot of Dark Eyed Juncos, all different kinds of Sparrows, a few Blue Jays and Cardinals, and every once in awhile a Tufted Titmouse or a Nuthatch will show up.  

On the warmer not-freeze-your-face-off days I like to bundle up and take my camera out to see if I can get some shots of the birds at the feeder.  This day was sorta in between the warmer and the freeze-your-face-off weather!

A Junco enjoying a Sunflower seed.

To capture these two pictures I was laying on my stomach in the driveway for thirty minutes waiting for some of the birds to get close enough.  I was finally able to get a few shots!  The rocks didn't make a very comfortable spot to wait, though!

Back in August of last year I purchased a new Nikon D7100.  At first I was having trouble with the focus, but after experimenting and reading through the instruction manual I figured out I could select where I wanted the camera to focus!  Most of you photographers out there probably already knew that, but oh well! ;)  These two pictures are from when I finally got that figured out!  I was so excited and was finally able to enjoy my camera more!

Here is a picture I snapped of my sister in her freeze-your-face-off-weather getup. :)  Luckily the sun was shining and the wind wasn't blowing too bad!

And here is the picture she took of me in my getup!  You always gotta carry an extra pair of insulated gloves! :)

How do you like to dress for cold winter photography?