timsdd aka Tim's Digital Darkroom

I’m not going to lie to you, I was not sure how these would turn out. Having processed them I’m still not sure! I’m sure processing them with this particular lighting scenario is of utmost importance. However, it is not my strong suit.

I still think they are far more dynamic (pun intended (I usually intend most if not all of my puns)), than single exposures would have been. But b/c the light range is so dramatic, on extreme opposite ends, that’s why you need to be a processing ninja. You tend to introduce oodles of problems along the way when the light is so far apart from light to dark. I.E. noise, and lots of it!

I guess the ultimate test would be to scour some images others have taken and compare, something I had/have not done yet. Unfortunately, I honestly think that this is one of those cases where a camera fails to capture what the eye sees. It gets you pretty close but falls short IMO. I think part of that might be the atmosphere when you are standing there taking the pictures….cold, alone (which I prefer), but surprisingly festive (due to the subject matter and time of year).

And so wow, enough rambling, how about some pictures then? :-)

As you can see in this one there is some fountain ghosting….kind of tricky to get rid of especially if it’s concentrated heavily in one particular area.

This was with my TSE and I think if you’ll look on the right hand side, it must have been shifted! I need to tighten the set screws as I found the lens to be walking on me that night!

These, the last of the daytime photos I took in Lubbock, are less dynamic in part for 1) the time of day I took them and b) the boring cloudless sky.
Though I didn’t want to leave them out as I found some cool buildings I did not cover prior, and I also ventured off campus to check out some churches downtown.

Plus, I did not want to waste the opportunity to dust off the B&W ‘filter’.

This church had some serious potential but it was closed! I couldn’t believe that. The next most impressive church was open but had a funeral in progress…not exactly the best time for me to stop and take photos. So I struck out in terms of being able to check out some sanctuaries….next time!

Must be an AG building of some sort, the silo is a dead giveaway :-)
The dark red on the roof is wet spots from melted snow. And yeah, 1/750…not nearly enough to block out the sun!

I almost made this one B&W as well but I could not due to the magical electric golden glow from the sun on the other side of the archway. It almost looks like a neon arch.

Jones Stadium (FOOTBALL!) That would have been a treat to be able to roam the inside of the stadium….need to find out how to arrange that for next time not to mention being able to do so in Austin @ UT.

This was taken with a 24mm TSE so you can see just how close I was with the 8mm FE; namely maybe less than 30′ from the structure when I took the photo!

I should have included a side by side with a normal exposure here just so you could see the HUGE impact HDR brings to the table in certain situations; this was definitely one of them!!

I am far and away a creature of habit….I think that is the polite way to say I have AR/OCD tendencies :D

I said all of that to mention this, I almost (99.992%) always post my pictures chronologically which can make for a confusing state @ times. In this particular case it worked out great though. The 4 sets of posts actually have a cohesive theme in each post (arches, stairs, etc.); I thought that was pretty neat.

Hard to imagine that concrete was pure ‘white’, it has surely taken on a personality of it’s own.

A perfect spot for the fish-eye lens. There is some distortion that is usually hard to avoid, I try to limit it when I can as I do not want it to be the primary focus of most of the images….the crop factor on the body really aides in limiting that….though I would love to see full frame versions too.

Not many leaves left! I bet a month earlier would have made for some popping colors! But you can forget about green grass….last year being brutally dry, I doubt it would have been much greener than this!

One of several cool sculptures/statues around campus. Again, another thing I can pay more attention to next time.

These next two were tough. I had to cheat with my tri-pod head…it does not hold anymore, it needs some repair and opr maintenance for sure. So I basically had to steady these shots by hand and it was tough doing so trying to peer down the stairwell.

I love the way HDR can really wrap the light and paint the scene. Lots of shadows, I doubt barely visible if at all to the naked eye, I actually cannot remember if it was…I was too busy holding my TP head :o ;-)