Weihnachtsbaum

Weihnachtsbaum
Originally uploaded by K0GMB

I love Christmas Time.

It's been years since I've had a Christmas in Nebraska, and I must say that this is the best place in the world to have it. Everyone's so nice, towns become very festive with lights, celebrations, and kindness.

And then we have awesome things like this. This is the Christmas tree in the state capitol building in Lincoln, NE. A rather imposing thing, it's 35 or so feet tall and lit with light-emitting diodes. I can guarantee that lighting that entire tree is more energy efficient than any of the other lights you see down the hall.

This image is an example of me playing around with high-dynamic range imaging. Basically, cameras are only able to get so much of the differences between light and dark with every shot, so I take 5 shots, (2 dark, 2 light, and one normal shot) and use a program called photomatix to blend them together. The result is something like this, where portions of each photograph are blended together to restore brilliant color, detail in the highlights and shadows, and ad realism or surrealism and contrast to the image.

If you have a flickr account, please comment on this image, I need to know if it's too overdone, I wanted it to be as realistic as possible without being overbearing or looking like a painting. I will browse your photostream and in turn, comment on your images.

Thanks!