Leadville Railroad Water Tower

I guess I'm going to have to go shooting this week end so I have some new material.  In the mean time here a single shot HDR of the old water tower along the Leadville Railroad line.  Taken this summer while we were hanging out in Vail, CO

Fire and Water

There is all kinds of really fun art work around Vale.  This fountain featured fire and water.  I have no idea what it all means, but people seemed pretty fascinated by it.  I don't know if I was able to capture it very well but here's a single shot HDR.  Trying to put together with multiple exposures would not work because the flame gets lost.  This exposure was 1/8th second at f8 ISO 200 (1.5 stops underexposed).  In Lightroom I corrected the exposure and worked out the contrast.  Then into Photoshop for some HDR work.

Leadville Station

Here's another shot of the Leadville railroad station.

Leadville Train

One of our little adventures on vacation was a ride on the Leadville train.  These are all singe shot HDR done in Photoshop only.  As I've mentioned before I like trains, so I appreciate the rest of the family indulging me.  An interesting little fact about the Leadville train; the people who own it bought it for $10.00.  They said it was the most expensive $10.00 they every spent.

Colorado National Monument

I spent last week in Grand Junction, Colorado.  While I was there I took some time and went up to the Colorado National Monument again.  I got up there just about sunset and took several panoramas from three difference locations in the monument.  I think this is my favorite.  It's an HDR made from 40 photos.  There's eight frames x five exposures for each frame.  I think I've decided that manual exposure works better than auto - the auto exposure tends to produce some vignetting when stitching photos with significant variations in light.  It is notable in this picture.  This picture is 438Mb before I compressed it for the internet.  The pan is about 150 degrees.

Silver Dollar in Leadville, Colorado

Well, we're back from Vail.  I only took 150 or so pictures here, but I was pretty excited to see how a couple of them turned out so here's the first.  I recently purchase a couple of little table top type tripods.  I shared a couple of posts ago how easy they are to travel with.  Well it's also pretty handy at being very discreet when taking photos.  This is a three picture HDR, I went real artsy on purpose - seems to fit the scene.  There is a lot of junk in this photo, but this tavern in Leadville has been around since 1879 and they've been collecting junk along time.

Colorado National Monument again

Here's another of the panoramas I took while driving through the monument.

Colorado National Monument

Here's another panorama I took while I was exploring.