Toying Around with Hyper-Real HDR

On Labor Day this year I went out shooting. I opted to stay locally, near Ontario, California, and see what I could find since I usually head out for a few days into the remoteness of the Mojave Desert when I get the chance. After I left the Pomona, California area I headed towards Union Pacific’s large classification yard at West Colton, California.

I set-up on the Pepper Avenue Overcrossing, which was my first time at that location, late in the day. I proceeded to take shots into the night and didn’t get hassled once - which was nice. The Pepper Avenue vantage point affords good views of the depature yard and arrivals of trains from points north via the Mojave Subdivision and points east via the Yuma Subdivision.

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In addition, the area immediately adjacent to the Union Pacific property is the Colton, California GATX full-service center, one of many locations where GATX maintains it’s fleet of railcars. On the GATX property, behind a building, is a small stub yard. On one of the tracks in this yard are two old locomotives that appear to be bidding their time until a final disposition is determined.

As I viewed the scene of the GATX complex, I like the way the light fell upon the locomotives and nearby tank cars so I took a series of shots. While I was post-processing the series of images into an HDR image, I felt that these shots, in particular, were a perfect opportunity for me to get uncomfortable and push the envelope with respect to realism.

Normally I prefer to create HDR images that tend to look more like traditional photographs but these photos lent themselves to more tweaking particularily due to the industrial scene and the apparent age of the equipment. I offer the following shots as a first attempt at pushing an HDR image to a hyper-real HDR image:

GATX 46704 at Colton, CA 1
[9/6/2010 - GATX Facility, Colton, CA] © Copyright 2010 Joe Perry.GATX 46704 at Colton, CA 2
[9/6/2010 - GATX Facility, Colton, CA] © Copyright 2010 Joe Perry.