Scott Kelby shared his favorite HDR settings a few days ago on his blog, so I tried it out!

I went on a mini HDR kick when I first started photography, downloading a free trial of Photomatix.  I lost interest when I quickly realized that I didn’t understand what I was doing (still don’t really. . .), although I liked some of the images I produced. When I bought Photoshop in January, I tried it again- but none of my images that I edited had that Photomatix look to them.

I think for someone like me, a preset is the answer. I just copied his settings and saved it as a preset- easy. I realize that this isn’t an outstanding image- just a quick look up at the the sky with clouds this morning- but it is interesting to see what happens to it.  I played around with it some more in Photoshop- even tried using it as a layer above the original image and blending it different ways (I want to try that again- interesting effects!)- but am posting it today just as is, the Scott Kelby way.

And here is the original shot (with a little definition and midtones boost).

As I understand it, HDR uses three images at three different exposures which are then blended into one. When I used Photomatix, I made 2 copies of an image- and made one lighter and one darker- then the software merged them. For this process, I used a single image- I have no clue what Scott does!

With a really busy day ahead of me, I actually thought about what my photo of the day would be last night. It is Texture Tuesday with a Back to School theme (a natural for me), so I planned ahead what my photo would be. Because of my 365 project, I am a stickler for taking the photo on the same day I post it, so I can’t work on the photo ahead and then just post it on the appropriate day.

But when I got up early this morning, I became entranced by the changing light out the window as the sun rays began to peek through the fog. Although I was planning an inside still life for today, I wandered outside in my nightgown and began snapping photos.  The light was changing quickly, so my original foggy shots were changing into sunny ones.

As I shot over the back gate (having abandoned the front porch for fear of what the neighbors might think of a nightgowned photographer photographing the fog over their houses), I became more interested in the details of the gate itself- hence this photo.

f/7.1, 1/100, ISO 320, 85mm

So from back to school to fog to sunlight to gate hardware- all in 27 photos. Symptoms of ADD? Hmmmm…..