Now I am officially no longer a regular part of the Barnes and Noble staff. I feel really sad in some way. I have loved the people and the company.
My first store was the old North Arlington store, which houses some weird electronics store now. We had a party on one of the last days there, and celebrated our manager, Janey, who was one of the best managers I can ever remember having. We had an amazing crew, and she should get the credit.
We presented her with some gifts that we had all pitched in for. One of them was a framed picture of the store that I had taken. It is an HDR image (for High Dynamic Range).
The way a camera works, it can only capture a much narrower spectrum of light than the human eye can. That is why when you take a picture of your friends in front of a beautiful sunset they are either completely black shadows, or the sunset appears overly bright and less colorful. Photographers try to get around this is by using a flash, but that never reproduces the image the way the human eye sees it. The flash washes color out, or colors the image unnaturally.
An HDR image fixes this. In order to create one, you have to take multiple shots at different shutter speeds. I believe this one had somewhere between 8 and 10. Then you merge them into one image, making the areas that would be too dark just right, and the areas that would be too bright darker. The image that results is a little surreal at times, but is much more accurate than a single photo ever could produce.
I don’t believe that this is a perfect HDR shot, or even a really great one, but it is good work for me, and it is an image of something that I have a real emotional tie to. This image means a lot to me.
