meetup

On Sunday, half a dozen photographers from New England Photo Expeditions met at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth for the museum's annual candlelight stroll. I took the opportunity to experiment with high dynamic range (HDR) photography. The image of the Tyco Visitors Center below is a composite of three bracketed exposures processed in Photomatix Pro. It attempts to capture the range of detail in highlights and shadows that cameras (at least the kinds of cameras we mortals own) can't record in a single exposure.

I'm not a big fan of the overprocessed and unrealistic looking HDR images you can see all over the photo sharing Web sites, but a more understated image like this one appeals to me. I'll be trying this again.

Today I attended the Maine Flickr Meetup at Fort Williams Park on Cape Elizabeth, south of Portland. Though it was a snowy Sunday I had a great time, took a few pictures I like, and made a lot of new friends. Maine is a photographer's paradise. I'll be going back for more.

New Hampshire Photo Expeditions took a tour of covered bridges in New Hampshire. I wasn't getting many good shots, so it was time to add some props. This Hummer driven by one of our members seemed like just the thing.