Welcome to Hollywood

Well earlier this evening Stephanie and I arrived in Los Angeles, California. It is my first time here since I was three so I am super excited. Stephanie has been before but is equally if not more excited. We have a busy 3 weeks getting all over the South West Coast, including a cruise to Mexico this Sunday for 7 nights. As soon as we got to the accommodation this evening Stephanie hit the pillow while I power walked up the Hollywood Hills to the Griffiths Observatory. This is the best vantage point to see the LA City Skyline. This is a location often used in films, one in particular was YES MAN, with Jim Carry. Please enjoy the pictures below, and see you next time.

Click the photos to enlarge them.

Here is a timelapse of the City I took.

We Built this City

This evening I decided to try out something I have been meaning to do for YEARS. I literally mean years.  I first learnt to do HDR (high dynamic range) photography 6 years ago, but I never put it into practice. It is a very simple technique but the mastery is in the post production. I haven't got it perfect to say the least but here are some of my first attempts. What you do is take a series of photos at different exposures and you use software to merge the photos together to produce photos with detail in the shadows and the highlights producing a photo with a high dynamic range, hence the name HDR.

Note the last 3 photos are not HDR, they are just regular photos. The last two however are interesting. I used two iPhone torches to light up the tree. I use the app iTorch. There truly is an app for everything. Now I should tell you I am actually using this as practice for when my Wife and I head off to the USA and Mexico later this week. Keep an eye out here for some photos from our trip.

Click on the photos to view them bigger.

Here are the normal photos.

In these two I used two iPhone torches to light the tree.