53 Ford – Drumheller, Alberta – Canada i

53 Ford – Drumheller, Alberta – Canada ii

53 Ford – Drumheller, Alberta – Canada iii

53 Ford – Drumheller, Alberta – Canada iv

Banff Springs Hotel – Banff, Alberta – Canada

Fairview Homestead HDR i-Edit-Edit-Edit

Fairview Homestead HDR ii-Edit-Edit-Edit-2

Grain Bins – Stettler, Alberta

Johnson Canyon – Banff, Alberta – Canada i

Johnson Canyon – Banff, Alberta – Canada ii

Kananaskis Mountains – Canada

Sunshine Ski Resort Road – Banff, Alberta – Canada

One of this summer’s revelations was finding that my Canon DSLR was able to move from three images in automatic exposure bracketing to seven, a potent option of possibility for use in High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography. In August, I trialed this broad swath of bracketed exposures in Southern Alberta in creating HDR images. Beyond such experimentation with camera and tripod, where I have been using Adobe CS6, Photomatix and Google’s HDR Efex for High Dynamic Range image processing, I found a free HDR program within the accompanying DVD/CD to my June 2015 issue of PhotoPlus Magazine (the Canon Magazine) – HDR Projects 2 – and was surprised to find how much more was now in my photo-editor’s control in producing an HDR image; I have since upgraded the software to HDR Projects 3 Professional. Summer’s downtime also presented opportunities to gather HDR skills. I took-in a webinar offered by RC Concepcion, ‘HDR Exposed,’ through the KelbyOne website. The webinar dealt with static and moving HDR images and dealt with all considerations in the process of creating the final HDR image (e.g. overcoming camera distortion, creating photo-stitched panoramas in portrait or landscape formats etc.). One of my new goals is to create an HDR image of a building interior – new, old, dilapidated and to utilize natural light to capture colour, textures and depth. We’ll see what happens.

Possibly an HDR Quote to Consider – “In Photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.” – August Sander

Listening to – Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Eyes on the Prize,’ Bruce Hornsby and The Range’s ‘The Valley Road,’ Don Henley’s ‘Sunset Grill,’ The Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie,’ Coldplay’s ‘Magic’ and Of Monsters and Men’s ‘Slow and Steady.’