The Tea Garden

During a trip to San Franciso in February 2010, we stopped at Golden Gate Park to visit the Japanese Tea Garden.  The weather was largely a dreary "white" overcast sky for much of the visit, and it was my typical luck that they had drained most of the ponds for cleaning.  I was determined to make the most of my time, however, and I decided to experiment with a series of bracketed exposures of different scenes that I could merge with high dynamic range (HDR) software later on.  All these photos are merged from three exposures:  one at correct exposure, one overexposed, and underexposed (0 EV, +2 EV, -2 EV).  Using Photomatrix, the results were quite pleasing to me.  In these photos, I was looking for an "artistic" dreamlike look.  While some of the contrast is sacrificed to obtain the full dynamic range of the photo, it allows you capture a greater level of detail throughout, which is much to my liking.  I took these photos on a tripod with my Canon 50D, using a wide angle lens.  During this photo, I got a break in the sky for some nice blue sky that nicely contrasted the vegetation and the beautiful wooden pagoda at the entrance to the garden (f16, ISO 100, 13 mm).      PLEASE CLICK ON THESE PHOTOS AND OPEN UP THE LARGER SCREEN VERSIONS...YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED WITH THE AMAZING DETAIL!!!