Pick Tac Toe

With nothing better to do, I tried to make something interesting about a bunch of toothpicks and came up with this idea, I positioned the X's and O's without much thought so I dont think it makes too much sense why the X's won. xD

Going HDR

In image processing,computer graphics and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.


This method was developed to produce a high dynamic range image from a set of photographs taken with a range of exposures . With the rising popularity of digital cameras and easy-to-use desktop software, the term HDR is now popularly used to refer to this process. This composite technique is different from (and may be of lesser or greater quality than) the production of an image from a single exposure of a sensor that has a native high dynamic range. Tone mapping is also
used to display HDR images on devices with a low native dynamic range, such as a computer screen.

One problem with HDR has always been in viewing the images. Typical computer monitors (CRTs, LCDs), prints, and other methods of displaying images only have a limited dynamic range. Thus various methods of converting HDR images into a viewable format have been developed, generally called "tone mapping".

Early methods of tone mapping were simple. They simply showed a "window" of the entire dynamic range, clipping to set minimum and maximum values. However, more recent methods have attempted to compress the dynamic range into one reproducible by the intended display device. The more complex methods tap into research on how the human eye and visual cortex percieve a scene, trying to show the whole dynamic range while retaining realistic colour and contrast.

Images with too much "HDR" processing have their range over-compressed, creating a surreal low-dynamic-range rendering of a high-dynamic-range scene. All these images are taken with 6 different exposures and I used Photomatix, a software that generates HDR images using Tone Mapping.

Cat

A photo of my grandmother's cat

Soccerball

Randomly took this photo the other day after the gardener came to cut the grass.

Night Time at the Waterfront

Bush Fire

The beginnings of draught season has just made it's presence known as a bush fire had sparked on a hill not far behind from my house. The fire began in the early evening with plumes of smoke and sparks rising into the sky and the fire blazing ever brighter as time went by with the distant sound of crackles of burning wood.

Being on the bottom of the hill, we didnt know much that was going on, wether or not a fire engine had arrived. Concerned neighbors came out of the comfort of their homes to observe.

The night went on and it seemed like the fire began to creep closer but then, not long after that, the glow of the fire and the noise of the crackling wood began to die down as the fire engine which was only just visible through the trees had arrived to put the fire out.

A Stone's Throw Away

Went to the beach yesterday to kill a few hours, bought some things to eat, and watched people going about the beach flying kites, fishing, having a picnic, there was even a photoshoot going on for a wedding not that far from where I was.

I went around taking pictures. This one is of a kid that was throwing stones into the water.

Need a Hand?

This is a photo I took of my hand, horizontally flipped half of the image in photoshop and used layer masks to create some texture variations on the hand.

Dragonfly

A macro shot of a dragonfly.

Chester Makes A Wish

Happy Easter to all :) . Its Chester's Birthday today so we bought him a blueberry muffin as a birthday cake XD.

Raindrops

After days of unbearably hot and humid weather, it finally rained today, so I went outside to get some raindrop photos. This one is a 100% crop of the original image.

A Light In The Dark

Taken on the same night as the Lights Out post.

Lights Out

The night after earth hour saw us once again in complete darkness as there was a power cut in the entire Lintas area due to some accident someone had with an important power line. It lasted for almost five hours starting from somewhere around 4.30pm to around 9pm. After dinner, I went outside and saw that the sky was filled with stars so I took some pictures. This is a 3 picture panorama of the sky that night. All three images were taken in 5 sec @ iso 200. It should be alot clearer if you load the bigger image :) [It also has been compressed for faster loading so it might appear more blur than the original] I also used photoshop to add more glow to the stars to make them stand out.