observing the process will change it

Yikes, I'm obviously not cut out to keep up with this at this point. So I'll stall by posting a kitty.

How quickly I fall off the wagon.  Here's a pretty clam.

This was my first try with the Orton technique, where you combine an out of focus layer with super-sharpened layer and get this sort of dreamy look.  This picture was not sharp at all to begin with and was kind of a lost cause, until I came across the Orton group on Flickr and thought that might be a way to rescue this picture.

This is the beautiful Hippeastrum given to us by our friends Monica and Seth.  It's a pretty amazing house plant because it requires almost no attention and then before you know it there are spectacular flowers shooting out of it. 

1/1/2007

I don't think I've done an HDR post on here before. It stands for high dynamic range and when done properly can yield stunning results.

This one isn't especially realistic, but it has a dreamy glow and looks like what the room might have looked like on some really sweet medication.

The wiki link above has all the linkage you'd need to get started with HDR yourself, but this is a pretty straightforward walkthrough for Photoshop.