I had a limited window to take pics that night as it was out last night in town. I could have spent another 2 hours easily. One thing I would do next time is duplicate some of the same shots but using my Canon 50/1.4. You want to talk about bokeh, son, that lens has got bokeh cubed!

A lot I say!!

Ok, so this one is closer to what it looked like in person.

2 things I didn’t notice as I was framing this, the Christmas tree on the right and the way the light hits the top of each line of stairs. I’m pretty sure the latter would be barely noticeable if at all had I not used HDR. Much in the same manner that I thought the boring dull gray sky from the daytime pictures turned out to be anything but boring and dull.

Love this building. It was the first one I went inside I think during the day (12/23). They were doing a complete remodel job on the top floor. It had potential for some interesting pitures but the lighting was way too strong.

I was barely able to fit this one with the 24mm TSE.

I was standing on the top of wall, a fountain, and I did not have much room to maneuver. I was quite pleased to fit it though!

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!

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!!