This past Mother’s Day, May 14 2010, my girlfriend and I decided to head up to Huntington Library to wander around for the day and of course I decided to bring some photo equipment to play around with, never thinking it would turn to an amazing day for photography. Doesn’t it always happen like that. We strolled around the park for a while and came upon this photo opportunity (titled ‘Relaxed Rose Garden’) in the Rose Garden and really the only way to get this photo with the foreground and background in view and not blown out or too dark was with the use of HDR.

Relaxed Rose Garden

HDR is an acroynm for “high dynamic range” imaging which is a fairly new technique for myself, but in all reality has been around for quite some time, as early as the 1850’s. It allows the photographer to blend multiple exposures so that even the darkest and lightest area’s of a photo are pleasantly viewable. Of course trying to create that image so that is not too “cartoony” or unreal is the true challenge and something I enjoy trying to accomplish.

After completing our review of the Relaxed Rose Garden we continued our Mother’s Day adventure, May 2010, down a twirling path we created from one isolated spot to another testing out photo’s and dodging the local Mother’s Day families. Then this wonderful view appeared off to the side but another quick review was needed to see it from a different angle and wow I knew this would be a cool shot, of course HDR was on my mind again. The wall was quite dark, the sun streaming through the “leaf” window and the bright colors behind was going to make this a difficult shot. A quick setup of the tripod, mounted my camera and took 5 quick exposures and hoped for the best when I returned home that night. After some post processing and layering this became the latest photo from Huntington Library, titled ‘Chinese Leaf’.

Chinese Leaf

Hope you enjoy!