This High Dynamic Range image (HDR) was shot across the street from the entrance to Tryon Palace in New Bern, North Carolina. After spending the scorching hot afternoon of July 4th at the “Palace” it was time to head home. I spotted this beautiful streetside garden and couldn’t resist a few brackets.

Processing: I loaded five images into Adobe Photoshop for HDR processing since my new version of Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 is not yet working correctly on my computer.  Still need to work with Nik on the problem.?!  At any rate, the Photoshop HDR process, though not as powerful and diverse as HDR Efex Pro, is still a good way to create realistic HDR images.  After blending the images and applying Curves, and a little color balancing with Hue/Saturation, I used High Pass filter for more crispness in all those grasses.

Equipment used: Nikon D700 with20-35mm f/3.5-4.5 lens set at 20mm, f/13, ISO 500.

Here’s a nice, faded, Sepia version that seems to fit the subject.