While at my parents’ house I didn’t get much of an opportunity to wander far from the house to do any shooting since we were pretty busy with the family gathering. Instead, I just took the camera outside from time to time and wandered around the property, shooting things that caught my eye.

Sometimes things that seem pretty ordinary can take on an entirely different look when processed in HDR. Here are two examples of just that. These are some of the flower pots and gardening tools that have been put aside for the winter. While they certainly didn’t look like this in real life, I think the HDR process gives them a lot of flair and interest, and makes you notice these everyday objects that normally wouldn’t rate a second glance.

I used Photomatix v4 to process the hand-held bracketed images (-2.0/0.0/+2.0), and then used Topaz Adjust to bring out more of the details and color. I then finished up with the Curves tool in Paintshop Pro X3.

On the shot above, I just noticed that I forgot to crop the edges where the three images were lined up…oh, well, gives it a little bit more pizazz, I think!