Allergic to Iowa: part duex

I managed to dig up some more Iowa pictures taken summer 2010'

This one was fun. I saw a neat looking storm rolling in and managed to drive ahead of it and watch it engulf the entire town while I and the farm to my right remained dry. This is 8 shots stitched together in photoshop:

 Here is another multi-shot one:

I really enjoy panoramic shots. Except for when it's time to share them via online. It really doesn't do them much justice. To give you an idea of the clarity you can get out of one of these. I, if I had a magic mega printer could print these without any distortion Three feet tall by Ten feet wide.

Here is a better example to show you, see that little speck of a farm in the middle?
Using my Hollywood movie-like quality enhancement computer. With the press of F5.. Go!

 

Thanks 275MP camera!(Shh..I made that part up)

HDR

    In my previous post I mentioned HDR. To save future wondering about it when I post other pictures or mention it again. Here is a brief explanation written in a way that a drunken chimp would understand... So I don't bore you.
    Wikipedia describes it as:
In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high-dynamic-range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wide dynamic range allows HDR images to more accurately represent the range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight.^[1]
The two main sources of HDR imagery are computer renderings and merging of multiple photographs, the latter of which in turn are individually referred to as low-dynamic-range (LDR)^[2] or standard-dynamic-range (SDR)^[3] photographs.
Tone-mapping techniques, which reduce overall contrast to facilitate display of HDR images on devices with lower dynamic range, can be applied to produce images with preserved or exaggerated local contrast for artistic effect.

What does all of that mean?  In short, images presented to you in HDR pretty much give you robot eyes...Yay!

Well.... No Geordi, try again.

Getting warmer....

Okay, so maybe it is literally nothing like the above pictures. What can I say? I'd use almost any excuse to bring Star Trek into this.

Nice try Morbidly Obese Cat... The only person you are fooling is yourself.. And you aren't even a person. You are just an obese cat!

Here is what the initial 3 shots I took looked like straight out of the camera:

Then I process those 3 in Photomatix Pro (and adjust to my preferences)
Then I end up with this:

From this point there are 83,654 more options available as to what you can do with Photoshop and plug-ins... That was just a rough estimate.



Project: Real Estate

   Recently I decided to start a new project. To sum it up briefly I'm doing a small series of photos with hopes of a real estate office having interest in prints. I have never really tried to make the concept of real estate related art... interesting but that's why I was interested in doing it. Because I've never done it before and it sounded like a good creative challenge.

    There is a house just 3 houses West of me that I have taken notice of many many times. The front of it is plain and ordinary and blends in perfectly with my bland ordinary street. My street is not a bowl of spicy chili. It's more like a bowl of boiled ham water.. Like the rest of the town, and most small towns for that matter.

Here is a shot of the side of the house I like, to give you an idea of the before:

 
    I started off picturing black and white artsy shots of house features.. I may go back to that yet. And then I thought to myself, how could I do this in a way that's similar to my normal stuff? So I decided to go the route of HDR with post-processing;Three shots, some do more, for now I'm sticking to 3... Then running them through Photomatix Pro(a cool HDR program) Then photoshop adjustments... Then Topaz(a sweet Photoshop plug-in) Then some other random things. After showing it and getting input from friends and family. I eventually got to this point:

             

     I wanted it to look semi-surreal. I really like how the colors pop in the HDR version below, but I kind of felt like they took focus off of the house itself.

Here's the same photo with the same white fadeout I added to the black and white sky: