By Linwood Wickett

By Linwood Wickett

Thursday, January 26, 2012

HDR Experiment

The Worm Hole

There I was, 20 feet above sea level, at a Photo Discussion Group meeting at the gallery in Portsmouth, NH. As my photography skills and knowledge are quite shallow, I was trying to hide my usual blank stare during the technical discussions. Then one of the geeks in the room started talking about his HDR, whatever that means. It was "HDR this and HDR that!". Like my father, who was as deaf as a fence post, I bobbled my head in agreement, pretending I had a clue about he was talking about. When I got home, I went to bed and tossed and turned wondering "What the heck is HDR?" After 5 seconds of this thought, I fell asleep. The next day, or the day after the next day, I tried to find out what HDR was so I would not look so foolish at the next meeting. The best answer I found, that I could understand, was it was a combination of multiple pictures and snag the best of each to combine into one picture. My ADD wouldn't allow me to search any further for a while, but I thought I would try an experiment with my foggy new knowledge.

So, I got out 3 of my best cameras, mounted them on a tripod from the attic with my best red duct tape, and got the HDR experiment ready for a night shot. (See the first picture for my camera set up, taken with my trusty 110 film camera.) By the way, if anyone has any better way to connect a camera to my tripod, I would appreciate the knowledge.

Anyway, I toddled up to York Maine and set my HDR equipment in action. Then I took the pictures to a local photo processing place and asked them to make an HDR photo out of the three pictures. "What's HDR?" they asked. I had no answer, so, I asked them to just send them pictures off with a note to combine the pictures and see what happens.

Ninety-five dollars later, I got my picture, which I call "Through the Worm Hole." It isn't like the worm hole that the crows and robins peck into in my back yard, but more like the science fiction type. Although, from what I understand about worm holes in space, going through one would be like a person drawn through one like worms use.

Okay, Nancy is calling me for lunch, so..

Keep your lens clean,

Linwood "Lin" Wickett
 

 

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