I'm still waiting to see the photo of the photographer who decided that he'd try to get his macro shots of the cholla cactus, all the same! I am glad to hear you will NOT be the one!! Good choice.
Good choice on the HDR, too, which does not look like one to me at all!
In how far is this one strikingly different from a "normal" photo you could take of that cactus?
You'd be talking about my friend, "Meatball."
It's not that remarkable a shot other than showing parts that would usually go too light or dark in a normal shot. I wanted to try 'bracketing.'
As far as a 'properly exposed' photo, here's about what I usually come up with;
IMO, the shot has portions that are too light and dark.
The following is -1;
Typically I would like to work with this. I'd lighten up the dark spots and keep the highlights the same--too much work with uneven results (although I've been having better luck using RAW).
This one is +1;
And it brings out the dark areas pretty good.
Although I worked with RAW on the HDR, I didn't adjust anything but the orientation- The white balance is on 'cloudy', which I prefer to shoot with all the time (learned this from a National Geographic photographer).
for convenience, here's the HDR again;
I made as little adjustment in Photomatix as possible to the tiff files and saved the result as tiff.
In CS2 I made minimal adjustment on levels and curves- saved the file and resized.
With the reduced size, I copied the shot to a new layer and used the sharpen filter, then reduced the opacity to about 60% (to try to take care of my over-sharpening problem). Flattened and...
At worst, I figure it can be used eventually in my Cactus Guide page as a 'document' photo showing the stem structure in a month or two when I expand it;
http://mojavedesert.net/cactus/silver-cholla.html
In relation to the windy conditions, and having to shoot between gusts and keeping all the needles lined up in the HDR and producing a natural looking shot, well, I've achieved a solid position at the top of the bell curve (neither real good or real bad). :thumbup:
-short story made long.