I finally got off my butt, turned off Judge Judy and got out to make some images of the city we have called home for the last year. The primary motivation was testing a new lens that my wife bought me as an early birthday gift. (Thank you and I love you very much.) We picked a Friday evening for our venture into downtown’s Bicentennial Park.  The weather was perfect and other than a few mosquitoes, it was a perfectly pleasant venture into the city.

For many the preferred time to shoot is in that last hour of sunlight.  For me it’s just getting started when that fireball slips below the horizon.  The magic of the night has always produced some of the biggest rewards creatively.  It’s almost as though those who designed this area of Columbus had photographers in mind.

I have always been fascinated by the “Zone System”.  The concept of manipulating film, exposure, and development to match the dynamic range of a particular subject was something that has a strong allure to the “Control Freak”.  HDR, the digital equivalent to the zone system, has the same appeal.  Admittedly, I am a “late to the HDR party”.  My first experiments with it in 2008 were not impressive and I quickly dismissed it as a gimmick. The results from early versions of Photoshop were less than impressive.  Since then several very useful tools have come along and made HDR a more practical tool.

So at the present time, I’m having fun using this technique as a means for artistic expression.  I love the ethereal feel and find this technique far more enjoyable that processing infra-red film in a Paris hotel bathroom.  I’m looking forward to seeing what else Central Ohio has to offer subject-wise in the next 38 weeks.

DGR

Purchase Prints: