This is my entry to today's Monomad Challenge, HDR unfinished.

Every year for some strange reason, I end up taking the same picture in the same place, different time, different style, but if I remember correctly it's the same place, kind of.

Today I was bored with all the heat that is back in the city, but in the end I decided that I had to go for a walk to keep my routine that I still have to follow, remember? I need to stay active because of my blood pressure, and being in the park I started to think about what I wanted to do, and although at first the truth is that I felt like taking pictures in HDR and color, what I'm going to tell you next is kind of funny.

As I didn't want to carry extra weight, I only took my camera with the 24mm lens, I thought there was still enough light to take the pictures and I didn't take the tripod with me, that was my worst mistake, besides as I've stopped being an Adobe user a few weeks ago and I no longer have Lightroom, I thought it would be a good exercise to work HDR in Darktable, and to make a long story short I'll finish saying that if you don't take the tripod, doing HDR in Darktable is a real nightmare.

The problem is that here we don't have an automatic option to align or deghost, so if there were many trees and wind the result is a disgustingly horrible picture, and this is part of the sacrifices I have to make for having decided to switch completely to Linux and free software like Darktable, the only option I can think of is to edit the pictures and make the HDR in Gimp working at jpg level but that will be a story for another post.

Seeing all this dilemma I decided to convert the images to Black and White, and I also decided to use only the best image of the 3 taken by my Canon M50 camera when doing the auto exposure bracketing, so here is the result.

Of all the pictures of this walk the one I liked the most is the following one, the couple sitting watching the lake while they talk and make plans for the future made me remember good moments of my youth, at first I had thought of making a more dramatic photo with less light but thinking a little better the scene I decided it should be full of light and a special brightness, just as life looks from youth, when you believe that everything is possible and nothing can go wrong.

When I started taking pictures in the park the first image was a “mistake” as I had planned to do the auto exposure bracketing but I forgot to set up the camera and in reality I only got a rather dark image that when I was working on the editing it felt good to work with, I liked the result.

At that moment was when I saw that I had not set the parameters in my camera, so I repeated the picture but in landscape mode, from that moment I noticed a little movement in the branches of the trees, but I sincerely thought that there would be no problems when editing the HDR in Darktable.

Since I sort of trusted the software even though I had never done HDR on it, I continued to take pictures including quite a bit of the sky in them, I only have one polarizing filter and ND, but it's for the 50mm lens and also for the 15-45mm kit lens, so I need to order a few more for this 24mm, I don't know why I haven't ordered it yet.

This bridge is in worse and worse condition, over the years I have seen how it has deteriorated and so far there is no sign that it will be repaired, you can still cross as long as you don't lean on the bars because all the metal is very rotten.

I know I mentioned that I take the same pictures in the same places, but it's not just my fault, it's actually the areas where you can safely take pictures without getting too close to the shore without risking falling into the water, also since it's full of trees sometimes it's very difficult to find a good spot that allows you to have a good view of the landscape.

In the next place I have always hoped to capture a big fish jumping out of the water while taking the picture, and although I could make it happen with editing I think everyone knows that I don't really like to do that kind of editing on my pictures, I can modify colors, exposure, white balance, but I don't like to add or delete elements, just the spots on the sensor, the more time goes by the more I stand firm in this opinion.

Finally, just at the moment of writing this post is that I remember that a long time ago I decided that it was not worth it at least for me and my style of photography, to try to take pictures in HDR, actually I think it is much better to wait for the right moment and use a polarizing filter and with that it is enough to get a good result, I love my canon M50 and not only because I don't want to buy a new camera, I love it because it gives me what I need to keep having fun while taking pictures or video, especially I love that it is small and it fits in my pocket, so that's why I almost never carry my tripod with me, see you later.