If you have visited The Daily Portsmouth before today, it’s no secret that I love HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography.  There’s something about the process that reminds me of the days I spent learning how to develop black & white film in the darkroom in my days at UNH.  It’s a very intimate process where you’re selecting where you want certain portions of the image to be overexposed, saturated with color, masked, etc.  It’s the process of creating the image you’ve envisioned while out on site and admiring a view of a landscape, a building, or in this case – a porch.  Obviously – you don’t have to use HDR processing to reach this vision, but there’s something about it that excites me as I wait for the image to present itself after blending my exposures (brackets) before I get to do my final tweaking…similar to waiting for the image to take hold while the paper sits in the developer.

As I was editing this photo (and admittedly going through the motions), I realized that the ceiling of this porch was actually painted a baby blue color and not the pure white that I had always assumed it had been.  It’s probably because my eyes always quickly darted through the scene while I was standing there, and I never thought to take stock of what was above me, as I was struck by the pure New England feel of the setting…so when I realized the colors were that much more varied and subtle…my appreciation for the process of editing and the modern day “developing” my digital film grew that much more.  I hope you’re out exploring scenes both familiar and unfamiliar, and appreciating what surrounds you.