Rusting anchor

I tend to have a philosophy of not deleting any images.  I use a rating system when I view images in Aperture which allows me to remove them from view, but keeps them in the library, to be easily revisited.  While I probably could delete some images (e.g. out of focus or badly exposed shots), the fact that disk space is relatively cheap, and that shooting in RAW allows me to recover alot at least in terms of exposure errors, I reckon on balance it’s better to keep images.  I never know when I might see something in a shot that previously I would have been inclined to demote to the dustbin.  Today’s photo is an example.

Recently I’ve posted quite a few images using High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing, because as I’ve said in the past, I’ve been experimenting with the technique.  Most of my previous processing using HDR was done on landscapes, or street shots, but when I revisited this image from a photowalk in Kinsale that I did with some friends this time last year, I thought it might make a good candidate for HDR processing.

As for other images, I took advantage of the fact that this was shot in RAW and created three different exposures from the one image in Aperture, to merge into a HDR using Photomatix.

This time I focused on bringing out detail, and played with almost all the sliders available to me in Photomatix to allow me achieve that aim.

In particular I wanted to bring out more detail in the rust of the anchor that wasn’t easy to show in a single exposure without over-exposing other areas of the frame.

I’m conscious of the risk of overusing HDR, but as long as I continue to find images that look better when put through that processing, it has merit as a tool in my bag of processing tricks.