Taking a Saturday break from birds, birds, birds. This is the pond behind the Visitor Center at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. In HDR. It is, maybe, a bit painterly. It is also a single jpeg tone-mapped in Dynamic Photo HDR for maximum drama…well…actually I took it into Lightroom after DPHDR and toned the drama down a bit. Still.

The pure Lightroom version on the left looks a little flat by comparison…but without the comparison it is still an interesting photo.

I always have mixed feelings about HDR. I certainly has immediate impact, but, honestly, the world is just not like that…or not often at least. I heard an interview with Trey Ratcliff, currently one of the super-star  proponents of HDR and high drama photography (over 1 million followers on Google+), in which he said, in effect: more and more this becomes the world we see. Interesting. And, I suppose, true. I know that when I used to do a lot of HDR, I did consciously imagine every scene as it would look after treatment as an HDR.

Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f6.3 ! 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Metered off the clouds. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.

Processed as above in Dynamic Photo HDR and Lightroom.