junmon603's photostream  

When it comes to accessibility and freedom of movement, I have to lump Mendocino County in with place like North Korea. It’s extraordinary when you consider how much seemingly unused open space lies closed before you. If you’re not a rancher, a vineyard, in a hippie commune, or just someone moving up from the bay area with more money than brains then you’re pretty much fucked when it comes to getting more than a hundred feet off any road in this county.

This shot is a little heavy on the HDR as compared to most of my other posts. The look was just too cool looking to tone it down to earthly standards, and (I feel) it fit the scene.

This shot was taken a couple of years ago when a weather front came through producing some odd looking clouds. Fortunately I had the good sense to bracket my shots which I finally got around to cranking out these last couple of days.

A note to the naysayers of HDR: It has been pointed out by others here on Flickr that Andsel Adams himself produced finished prints of his shots that looked nothing like they did when the scene was photographed. He was known for spending weeks working on a single shot using the darkroom techniques of his day. HDR is simply the digital version of Adams' labors. Whether done in a darkroom or on a computer, both techniques are merely tools and like any tool it can be used to enhance, modify or distort a scene. I myself choose to use HDR to depict a scene that I believe to be true to life as seen by my eye and interpreted by my brain. No camera in the world can capture as a whole what we see in real life and to suggest that HDR does not or cannot help to show the world as it truly is amounts to little more than ignorance and denial.

Caught this shot in front yard of a home when walking back from the neighborhood park. This is likely the last of the flowers for the rest of 2011.