Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 

Fave 5 From 2011 Part 2

I'm still having difficulty believing it's December already, and 2011 is now measured in days. With the end of another year you'll be assailed by all kinds of "Top (Fill in the blank) of 2011". I thought I'd look back at the over 1400 photos I took in 2011 and pick my top 5 to be revealed over the final weeks of 2011.

Photo number three combines my two favorite types of photos, large panoramas and HDR processing. Originally shot as a standard panorama (Go here to see the original panorama) I decided to try to HDR it. Since I shot the six shot panorama using both JPEG and RAW file types I was able to adjust the exposure levels to give the appearance of taking 3 separate exposures. This technique isn't as possible with JPEG because the file doesn't keep as much information about the shot as a RAW file would.

I wasn't sure how best to process this; HDR all the shots of the panorama then stitch them all together or stitch three separate panoramas then HDR them. I decided on going with the stitch then HDR route and probably got lucky. I'm unable to completely control the stitching process so it's possible that my three panoramas are stitched differently therefore not making the photo as sharp as possible. I think I got lucky this time around, but next time I'll HDR first, which I have control over, and stitch last.

If you look at the original shot and this one I think you'll agree that there's just more to the HDR shot. The clouds have more detail, and the grass looks more alive. This might be a candidate to cut up evenly and make prints out of and line up on a wall.

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