HDRs and a Tutorial

HDRs! For those new to the concept HDR means High Dynamic Range, which in my mind is a good definition as your main objective is to get a large range of exposures for a scene and put them together to get the best of each one.

This can be accomplished with only a few photos, and here's an example from my PSPX4 program:

Recently, I've been trying my hand at making these things, with a little success, but I know I can probably do better.

Here's my 2nd HDR of some clouds (my first stunk too bad, lol).

I rather like it, actually.

And now for my best one so far (at least in my DeviantART watcher's opinion, as I have more favorites on this thing than any of my other photos EVER).
The downsides are that the color is kind of unnatural, and it could have gone more sunset style than I did, but oh well.
Also, I kinda made this a tutorial, but as I'm no pro it's really just showing what I did. Please click it for Full View or view it on deviantart HERE.

After the processing I actually went and did more contrast and noise removal, as well as a few other minor things I don't remember. XD

I hope you like it!

P.S. These are all edits of the same image to resemble actual seperate exposures on only a slight scale. I haven't gotten the hang of actually taking a bunch of shots with a tripod. It would be too slow with my camera for a sunset.

Icons

A few days ago I created some icons for a photography group on deviantART called "ThatPerfectMoment".
At first I used some cat pictures and added the group's name on it (which can be seen Here), but decided it was probably better to create blank icons that text can be added to later on.
Here are some of the one's I made, of course they look better small:

 

The purple flower on the left could have probably used better focus, lol.

<                                    ^
Both of these shots are very nice in my opinion. I hope to add the full-size pictures very soon. :-D

If you've been following this blog for some time, then you've already seen the originals of these beach pictures.