
I learned a nifty photography trick a few months back. Many modern digital cameras (I use a Canon S3 which has this feature) allow you to take three pictures in rapid succession at differing exposure lengths. Using a program like Photomatix to combine the three images into one photo offers the advantage of uniform coloration throughout the picture (instead of having the sky whited out by focusing on a ground object or the ground be too dark by focusing on the sky).
The problem is that you have to use a tripod to capture the three images or the combined image will be blurry. My tripod is a whopping 4″ or so and therefore is of very limited use in most situations. For the above photograph there was a bench near the fountain so I used the bench to balance my tiny tripod on. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) it resulted in a very cooked image. I didn’t have time to retake the pictures with the tripod straightened out as the people I was with were freezing.
Instead I rotated the images after combining them to yield the above result which I rather like for a change of pace. You can tell I blended multiple pictures by the airplane in the upper left.
The fountain, by the way, is known as the International Fountain and is located in the Seattle Center along with Experience Music Project and many other attractions. We were going to have lunch in the Space Needle, but unfortunately, they are closed for renovations until mid-February.
P.S. I looked at this picture under Explorer and it looks horrible. For best results try viewing this blog in Chrome (or probably anything else other than Explorer which is a slow, lousy browser anyway).
Posted on January 29th, 2009 under Other. Tags: seattle. Comments: 2