These photos were captured on a Canon SD900 - 10 megapixel camera using a photography method called High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI). HDRI is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods.

For HDRI photography, several pictures of the same scene are taken with different levels of exposure. For the photos in this video, I took seven pictures of each scene with the exposure ranging from -2 stops to +2 stops using 2/3rds stop increments.

These layers were then combined using photo editing software, and adjusted to achieve the desired effect. Each picture can range from very realistic photos, all the up to the surrealistic, or even cartoonish.

As with any other image on this blog, you can click the picture to see it full size...

Such is the circle of life my friends. It looked like it had just washed up as I was walking by. On my way back past the dolphin, there were people starting to gather. Just down the beach was a backhoe working in someone's yard. I felt like asking them to come bury it, but didn't...

On a lighter note... I got to have breakfast with my parents this morning! Hay, video chat counts! We used to have Thursday morning breakfast together every week, for many many years, and that abruptly ended on my departure for Costa Rica.

We each setup our laptops on our respective kitchen tables, and it was a ton of fun. We video chatted for an hour and a half, from the USA to Costa Rica, all for free. Not a bad deal if ya ask me. You really gotta love modern technology, and the Internet, for letting us sit together from 2,985 miles apart (and yes, that is exactly how far apart we are).


Puffer Fish
This is a close up shot of a dried up puffer fish. I have seen these here on the beach before, and almost stepped on one once. Puffer fish are the second–most poisonous vertebrate in the world, after the Golden Poison Frog. Stepping on one of these guys has "bad day" written all over it.

Pineapple Remains
Seen more often, but much less deadly, are pieces of pineapples laying around. Stepping on one might not cause you to lose a foot, or even a toe, but would certainly send you back to your room for a few days. Ironically, they are bigger, easier to see, and easier to avoid, than the puffer fish.

Sand Shark
Ok, this is just a blurry picture of a thorn from the local vegetation... but would still be a painful surprise. I tried to push down on it, and it didn't budge. This is no flimsy thorn to mess with.
Hmm... come to think of it...
Maybe I should have removed those items from the beach...

This is kind of a cool shot...

At the top you can see Lucky, my "pet" gecko. Apparently he has found himself a girlfriend, which you can see in the middle of the picture. She's on the other side of the curtains...

Before I left California, my Mom gave me a first-aid kit, which came in very handy today. The sun is shining for the first time in a few days, so I decided to go for a nice ocean swim this morning.

When I swim, I walk down to the beach barefoot. I'm pretty sure that if I left my sandals sitting on the beach for a half hour, they'd be missing by the time I got back.

Unfortunately, because its been raining so much lately, the sidewalks here are very slippery with mud, mud, & more mud. I was walking down my neighbor's driveway and my feet slid out from under me. Because I was carrying my SwiMP3, and rather than dropping them, I just kept my fist closed and hit pretty hard. I landed on the knuckles of my right hand, and scrapped them open pretty bad.

Talk about a very intense swim. My knuckles were bleeding, it was high tide, and the waves were pretty rough. I was forced to swim further away from shore than usual, and I just kept imagining a shark was following my blood trail in the water. To make matters worst, I was the only one in the water as far as I could see. People were sitting on the beach, but not swimming...

To top it all off, my SwiMP3 didn't even work, so I had no tunes. This left me with only my thoughts & imagination to run wild. Honestly, I'm surprised I even got in the water. At the end of it all, I always feel great after a swim, and I even got some sun too, so it was all worth it.

Over weekend the condo next to me got rented. This is the first time I've seen people in there since I moved in. I hadn't really noticed how perfect my setup is here, until I had neighbors living on the other side of the wall from me. Thankfully, they left yesterday, and I now have my duplex back to myself again.

I will leave you with this thought... This moment in time is the furthest my immediate family has ever been apart from each other:

My lil sister is in Huntington.
My lil brother is in Garden Grove.
My big brother is in Catalina.
My parents are in Almanor.
And I'm in Costa Rica...

I'm not sure what was going on last night, but there was a fireworks show down on the beach.

I climbed up on the roof, and had a decent view, even though it was raining.

When I first heard the start of the show, I thought someone was firing a gun outside. I actually went in the other room and ducked down behind a wall.... I'm a dork. After the shots continued for a minute, I stuck my head out of the door and saw what was going on.