Another image from the abandoned ghost town of Cisco, Utah, with a couple of notes.

First, I haven’t done a formal search but I am reasonably certain that this is the first ever image I have posted using a fisheye lens. I rented one for this trip, and used it somewhat sparingly. The lens has never held the fascination for me that it has for many of my friends. I I do not dislike it, and I cannot articulate why, but that is the reality. I broke it out in Cisco because it seemed to accent the alternative reality feel of a ghost town.

Second, I processed this using the HDRSoft Photomatix 32-bit Lightroom plugin, that creates a single 32-bit Floating Point TIFF file. I do not fully grasp the technology, but do know that instead of creating a stnadard tonemapped HDR file, it creates a file with enormous dynamic range, that you manually tonemap using various controls in Lightroom, mostly highlights and shadows, plus brushes for dodging and urning. It tends to create a more realistic look than the regular tonemapping process. It also works only through Lightroom, which is complicating my decision to remain in Aperture and not switch to Lightroom.