I wanted to try out making High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, which seems to be all the range these days. HDR imaging is characterised by capturing a wider rage of colours. In other words, the HDR picture I have made here is able to show details in both the highlights and the shadows. Normally, of course, there would far more clipping in both the highlight and shadow areas – they would be either completely white or completely black. If you are interested, you can read more about what HDR is here; you can see examples of HDR pictures here; and you can find a lot of HDR resources here.

This HDR is my first try, so it is far from perfect. It was made of only two pictures that I had lying around from my last visit to Niagara Falls – JPEGs at that, which contain less colour information than camera raw. For optimal results, I gather you should use at least three raw files with three different exposures to capture both the highlights, midtones and shadows. More HDR pictures will follow.

The steps up to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago offers this stunning panorama of the city skyline. I took this without a tripod (actually, I’ve done all my panoramas so far without a tripod :S), so it’s not perfect, but the view more than compensates for that. The Shedd Aquarium itself was pretty cool too.

Ay carambo, this butterfly (the Blue Morpho, or Morpho granadensis in Latin) was not selling itself short. Always on the move, never sitting down, and when on rare occasion it did sit down it would fold its wings up — and the underside was not as pretty. Took a lot of patience waiting to find one sitting down and spreading its wings out. But what a reward.

Also called Heliconius hecale in Latin. I shot this butterfly in the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory. I took lots other pictures, but this is definetively one of the better ones. There were so many amazing butterflies there. I’ll go back one day when there are fewer people there. One of my favourite tricks was getting the butterflies to sit on my finger, I got quite good at it.

My brother Øyvind and sister Cecilie, also in the butterfly conservatory in Niagara Falls.

Hehe, I don’t know if he’ll appreciate the title, but here is my little brother, Øyvind, seven years younger than me. We visited the butterfly conservatory in Niagara Falls, where everyone had great fun getting the butterflies to sit on them (more of that later.) Once again a somewhat sub-optimal picture (and again, the photographer’s fault, not the subject’s).

Next up in my family portrait series is Cecilie, my two-year-younger sister.

*Update*
I changed the original picture, which was not very good, with this one.

Here’s my mum, Randi, at the Farmer’s Market in St Catharines, only a few days after they arrived. I’ve decided to make a family portrait series, so I’ll be posting pictures of my siblings as well in the next few days.

This post is meant as vindication for my dad, Helge, who I presented in an earlier post as the barbeque baron. He thought it gave people the wrong impression of him. Well, in addition to being an epicurean he is also a wine aficionado, here depicted in the wine cellar of Chateau des Charmes in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Don’t you want to go there? It was a lovely day. The boat in the picture is one of the Maid of the Mist boats that take tourists right up under the falls. After four years living only 20 minutes away from the NF, this was the first time I did this. Tip: if you go, take the Maid from the American side. Cheaper fare, and smaller boats means better view and quicker embarkation/disembarkation.

I’ve been to Chicago again, this time with my parents and siblings. And no tourist can go to the Windy City without visiting either the Sears Tower or the Hancock Building. This is the second time I’ve been in the Hancock Building  – last year I had a $54 brunch on the 95th floor (mmmmmmm). The observation deck on the 94th floor is just as cool, but it doesn’t have the food.

Here we are, in front of the Niagara Falls. From left: me, dad, mum, brother, sister.