"I love the medium of photography, for with its unique realism it gives me the power to go beyond conventional ways of seeing and understanding and say, "This is real, too." - 365 Project, Day 25

Digital photography has greatly expanded the convenience and accessibility of photography.  There is now no need to wait an hour, or two, or two days, before seeing your Ansel Adams moment.  All you need to do is press the little play button on the back of your camera.  Digital cameras have also greatly expanded the possibilities of what is possible to the amateur.  (Indeed, my S95 has a 'miniature effect', which copies somewhat accurately what could otherwise only be done with a $2600 tilt-shift lens.)  With the possibility of digital photo editing, as well, the creation of terrific pictures is far easier.  High dynamic range pictures lend themselves perfect to digital editing, and though they've become a lot more popular in the past few years, the idea of HDR imaging dates back pretty much to the birth of photography.

Photography had its birth-of-sorts in the 1820s (1826, generally accepted) and by the 1850s, some photographers were shooting, for example, seascapes and skies with different exposures (given that plates of the time couldn't capture both sea and sky adequately) and combining the results into one photograph.  Thus, HDR was born.  Images of nuclear blasts also utilised this same process in order to have detail within the blast and outside of it.  Humans are an ingenious bunch, and they will always figure out a way of getting what they want, be it in photography or other endeavours.

A lot of people complain about HDR photography and how bad it looks.  Sometimes it looks horrid, true enough, but if done right, it looks spectacular.  Besides, its origins are not with the digital age.  It dates back over 150 years, and its intentions were very noble and very simple to begin with.

I only say this because of my contribution to today's post.  I'm not saying it's a good picture, I'm just saying.

Frank

His note: Part of the wall that holds grocery carts in the Loblaws MacArthur parking lot.

Mandy

Mandy didn't have a blurb but she did say it was pretty tough to get the angle right without getting too much (or not enough) sun on the sidewalk.

Shannon

Her note: Mmmmm Aero bubbles

My picture

So, needless to say, there's a ton of work done on this picture.  It's an 3-shot HDR image taken outside my window.  It's my first proper HDR shot (i.e. not done in-camera), and I'm not too impressed with Luminance (but that's not important right now).  For example, the software couldn't handle the 18MP size, and would only spit out a 12MP version of the pictures.  After goofing off in Luminance a bit, I boosted some of the colours in Lightroom.  I don't usually edit my pictures too much other than tweaking brightness and switching to black and white, but with this picture my idea was to go crazy.  Mission accomplished, I believe.

Tomorrow should not be as exciting for me in terms of taking pictures, as the weather outside seems to refuse to warm up.  I might have a boring picture tomorrow.  You've been warned.