Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge

One of my favorite places to visit has always been the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. It's a 90 minute drive down from OKC, located just outside of Lawton. The middle of October and it was 90 degrees. There are tons of trails and you can always see some buffalo or wild longhorns. It's burned up pretty bad from the wildfires, it'll take a while for it to recover.

Trying to hide 

A Little HDR Tutorial

HDR (or sometimes HDRi) stands for High Dynamic Range image. So what the heck is it and how do you do it?

Let's start with the a photo I took one day at a Civil War battlefield site. This was taken with a general middle ground setting on the camera. It averages out the bright of the sky so you get some clouds and a little of the porch. It's okay but due to the harsh light and the shadows you lose a little detail.

Next take a look at this photo. Here it was taken a stop down so the clouds have more definition. But overall the photo is too dark and you lose almost all detail of the porch.

Then this next photo is taken one stop up. Now you can see the details of the porch better but the sky is whitewashed.

I could play around with the three photos and come up with something decent, but in this case my best method would be to combine all three photos using the best parts of each one.

 How to do it? It is best if you shoot using a tripod but I hardly ever do. I just try to hold the old camera as steady as I can and snap away. My camera can be set to automatically bracket three shots and it's my preferred method of shooting.

Next you have to have the software to combine the shots. You can search the web and find software although the best is probably Photomatix. I use the software that came with my Corel Photo Pro x2. There are plenty of good free trial versions available but they will generally leave a watermark on the finished project.

Load the three photos with your software. You usually have to align the images, some software will do it automatically. Then generate the image. What comes out is generally a flat look photo that needs a little bit of help. 

But once you tone map it and do some post process work (in this case I did a clarity adjustment, added some color saturation and a little sharpening.) Now the photo has the full detail of the clouds and the porch and looks much better than any of the three originals.

I only use this process on about 10% of my photos and I try not to go too overboard with the adjustments. Some critics really hate HDR but I see it's place in the digital world.

The American Barn

This one was taken off the side of the highway somewhere between Joplin, MO and Kansas City, MO. It is a three shot HDR with a barrel distortion correction.
I have no clue where this on is, probably in Arkansas, three shot HDR of a hay barn.

Between Springfield and Joplin, another three shot HDR converted to B/W.

The American barn is one of my favorite things to photograph.

Scouting Chickasha

One of my favorite websites is http://www.scoutingny.com/ . This website highlights the hidden and overlooked gems of a huge city. While in Chickasha this weekend I saw this really cool snooker sign for a men's club on main street. With the generic plastic society we live in now, I doubt anyone will every put up a sign like this today.

Burnt Offering

Tken with my point and shoot Sony camera in the Wichita Mountains. Single shot with curve adjustment and color balance.

The Wicked

Somewhere in Missouri. Single shot with Black and white conversion with curve adjustment plus dodge and burn.

The Sickness

Jordie slumped in the corner, her body trembling with the realization of what she had just done. She drew her knees close to her chest, closed her eyes tightly and slowly rocked back and forth.
She forced her eyes open and saw the shotgun where she had dropped it, fine wisps of smoke still slowly rising from the barrels. And beyond that, the outline of a body lay motionless on the floor.
Jordie's ears were still ringing from the boom of the shotgun blast. She replayed the entire incident in her mind... his coming at her... yelling at him to back off... raising the barrel of the gun... the lunge... the blast... the end.
Jordie was sure someone heard it, she waited in the dark silence for someone to come. She shivered even though it was mid-August. Waiting for the sirens, waiting for someone to come through the door, waiting... exhausted... passing out.
When she regained consciousness, her body was stiff from being on the hard floor. She raised up, trying to clear her head. That's when she noticed that her father was gone.
And so was the shotgun.
Three shot HDR, taken between Springfield and Joplin, MO. Cross-process filter and barrel correction.

But Not Without a Fight

Frank wrapped the heavy chain around the column of the front porch. He turned and looked out across the front yard, remembering the countless hours he spent playing catch. He thought about his parents, how his father would work countless hours out in the field, waking before sunrise every morning. And his mother, her work was never done, always cooking, cleaning or fussing about. He remembered his little sister, running around barefoot as a little kid, then running off to get married to Jimmy next door. He looked at the broken porch swing, and recounted the night he got his first kiss from little Susie Derkins and how ten years later he proposed to her on that very same swing. Frank’s eyes got moist thinking about Susie, the funeral fresh in his mind. He took a deep breath and wrapped the heavy chain around his torso and padlocked it tight to his chest. The bulldozers were coming in the morning to knock it all down.
But not without a fight.

This house was located about ten miles from Danville, KY right next door to my wife's son's house. I got permission from the owner to go up there and take some photos. This is a three shot HDR. I actually used a tripod on this one, a rarity.

The short story I wrote for this picture is part of my "1100 Words" project.
I didn't go in the house, although there were newspapers dated 2002 in a back storage area. The house is currently being torn down, the lumber is being sold off because of it's age.