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)

Allergic To Iowa

   The name of this blog suggests I dislike Iowa. That's only partially true. There are times when I do in fact like it. Spring time is quite pretty here. So is early summer, late summer, and most of the fall(the parts before it turns cold and grey) About the time you start hearing the geese fly overhead on their yearly trip to head south for the winter. That's the part I really dread. Because that means winter is fast approaching. I wanted to share with you some of my favorite Iowa-ey pictures(yes, that's a made up word) that really capture the parts of Iowa I really enjoy.

You might recognize this one from the current header of the blog:

This one I took a few weeks ago:     

I will admit.. I cheated on this one. The sky was Grey and blah the day I took this, I dropped a much prettier sky in:

As you can see, I do try and make the most of what I have to work with... Even when it's a blizzard(not the yummy kind from Dairy Queen)

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.