One of the great things about living in Texas is that you can enjoy outdoor activities most every day of the year. And, one of the best things about living in Austin is that you have so many beautiful places to do it. One of our favorite ways to get some exercise is to walk the Hike & Bike trail around Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin. The trail has 7.2 miles of great scenery. It is also one of my favorite places to take photographs.
Many people believe you need a bright sunny day to get good photographs outside. This is definitely not the case. Cloudy days give you good even light and good color saturation. Digital photography has made it much easier to get some fantastic photos on dark days utilizing a technique of tone-mapping multiple-exposed images. This is sometimes referred to as HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. As I have referenced before, see photographer Trey Ratliff’s blog Stuck In Customs to learn more about HDR photography. He even has a Free Tutorial there to show you the technique, step-by-step.
This is one of the photos from today’s walk that I took on this dark cloudy day and then processed using the HDR technique.
Lou Neff Point Gazebo
