This is another image from our weekend trip to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA. As I said in my previous post, what I had hoped would be a quiet winter morning in the Conservatory (like we had spent there last year) quickly [...]]]>

This is another image from our weekend trip to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA. As I said in my previous post, what I had hoped would be a quiet winter morning in the Conservatory (like we had spent there last year) quickly turned into a zoo  because it was “Or-KID Day” at the gardens and what seemed like a million kids showed up with parents in tow.

Despite these unforeseen challenges, I did get to do some shooting starting early on (before the kids arrived) with some wide angle HDR photography before progressing to some Macro and Lensbaby Soft-focus work. I will be presenting some examples of each over the next week.

I had just one opportunity to make the 5-image series I needed for this HDR composite image. Unseen stage left are the elevator and stairs up from the entrance. Obviously, I got there first, got set up and made this series of images just before the elevator doors opened the first group of visitors walked into the scene. I used my Canon 50D and 24-70 f/2.8L lens mounted on my tripod. I created the HDR image using Photomatix Pro and processed the image using Nik filters (Dfine for noise reduction), Viveza (to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, structure) and a couple of Color Efex Pro filters to tweak things a bit. I finished up with a bit of sharpening using Nik Sharpener Pro.

And this is the result.