The passion still burns

I was on my way home this morning from a 12-hour night shift of highway maintenance.  As I drove up my street admiring the sky and looking forward to some sleep, I suddenly looked to the East and remembered how cool the hydro poles looked, all lined up along the field of dense trees, surrounded by nature.  I immediately pulled a u-turn and said to myself...keep them eye's open just a wee bit longer Joey!  It's times like this where the passion still burns inside of me.  So I anxiously pulled up along the curb, turned on the 4-ways on and busted out my Gitzo tripod and grab hold of my Nikon D3.  I like what I'm seeing and thought it's about time I pull some local scene shots for my landscape photography collection.  So I made sure I geared to the lowest ISO setting on my camera and basically relived my Fuji Velvia 50 days...I was really into it.  And the cold morning weather with the windchill was very unfriendly.  You get tired when your waiting on 30 second exposures and your hands are freezing.  I pretty much knew what I wanted on this mission, I was moving fast...before the sky got brighter and all the local kids got on the school bus.  I've posted 3 images that have not been edited.  These will all be cleaned up in Capture NX and runned through Photomatix for my final high dynamic range(HDR) image.  Keep checking back, as I plan to post the final image once all the stages are complete.  I'm hoping to get a nice shot out of the whole deal.  My only concern is that the sky was moving and 30 second exposures may trump my HDR dreams!  Please note that I have little experience with HDR and that I want this to be a learning experience for everyone.

What is HDR?

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

Special thanks to Doug and Pat, who opened my eyes a couple years ago on HDR.  I'll be sure to post Pat's killer HDR image that he took in Cuba....YOU HAVE TO SEE IT!