Hey, This Is A Pretty Neat Trick

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I subscribe to the daily email version of a very useful blog/web site called Digital Photography School. It's free. Every day they post some bit of instruction, lore or inspiration for shooters. At least two or three posts every week are interesting and helpful to me.

Yesterday's piece was about how to make a dull photo into something new and dramatic using Photomatix Pro3. Readers of this blog know that I'm fond of the HDR images you can create with this software, using three to seven shots at different exposures to create an entirely new whole. It never occurred to me that you could use Photomatix on a single image. The little tutorial in the link shows how much fun it can be.

So, this is something I shot about the same time as Monday's post at the Carl Milles fountain, The Meeting Of the Waters. The original was pretty awful. There was too much contrast between the statue and the building, I forgot my tripod, my manual focus was sloppy and, probably, the dog ate my homework. After reading the DPS piece I threw the single image into Photomatix, buffed it up a bit in Photoshop and, voilà, this is what we get.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON FOLLOW-UP: U "R" Us asked to see the original of this picture, before Photomatix and Photoshop. So, here it is.