Standing at the southwest corner of Middle and Pollock streets in New Bern North Carolina, is this prayer garden at the historic, First Baptist Church. Anyone walking by can’t miss it and it’s a pleasantly refreshing change of view from the surrounding buildings.

As I passed by this scene on my HDR photo walk, the clouds had just blocked the sun which gave me an opportunity for this shot. Less contrast and more color saturation in the light and shadow areas allowed this more mellow image.

Processing:  I loaded nine images shot from -2 to +2 ev at .5 ev intervals into Nik HDR Efex Pro for tone mapping. I also added Structure for detail in the bricks. In Adobe Photoshop, I worked with Hue/Saturation to get more realistic color and used High Pass filter for sharpening. And finally, I used Adaptive Wide Angle to make the verticals straight. and balance the composition. This images was shot at 20mm so you can still see some stretch distortion at the lower right.

Equipment used: Nikon D700 with 20-35mm f/3.5-4.5 lens at 20mm, f/11, ISO 400.