Playing with Pictures

One of the wonderful diversions I get to explore on our yearly "snowbird" adventures on the Gulf Coast is my photography. As any long-time readers of these wanderings already know I have been an amateur photographer since I was 10 years old. In the winter I take a lot of pictures and play with pictures I have taken at other times in order to post them on a couple photo websites, Guru and Pixoto.

This year I have started experimenting more fully with what are called HDR pictures- High Dynamic Range. (See after pictures for a brief explanation.) I have an iPhone app that takes these pictures as well as another app for my Mac that can create HDR from other photos. So here are some of the ones I have played with recently, just for fun. Notice how they have a more "evocative" feel to them. That's Trey Ratcliff's word. His short description and link to his page are below. Enjoy.

Along Church Street in Bethlehem, PA at Christmas

Sunset in Alabama.

Alligator in the Mobile Alabama Delta.

Brown Pelican at Bon Secour

Close-up of the Metro-North train as it got closer than below.

MTA Metro-North commuter train in New Jersey

Another sunset picture in Gulf Shores, AL

From Trey Ratcliff web page:

HDR is short for High Dynamic Range. It is a post-processing task of taking either one image or a series of images, combining them, and adjusting the contrast ratios to do things that are virtually impossible with a single aperture and shutter speed.