There are my favorite images of 2013 and include jelly fish at the Monterey Aquarium, the Grand Canyon, Rancho de Chimayo, New Mexico and early morning (before the tourists arrive) in Galena, Illinois.
The beach shots were made down the street from our summer home in Wareham, Massachusetts.
Other California locales are the Stanislaus River near Pinecrest in the Sierra Nevada mountains, as well as several from Heather Farm Park in Walnut Creek, just a few hundred yards from our home.
The majority of these shots are my first experiments with High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. Cameras have a much more limited dynamic range (the visible range from dark to light) than our eyes. By making multiple exposures of a single image ranging from under-exposed to over-exposed and then combining them via special-purpose software, we obtain an image that more closely resembles what we see with our eyes.
However, like all computer-based tools, HDR photos can be manipulated to look grungy and artificial. My personal aim is to try to replicate what I saw in nature.
