Great Rivers Imaging

Here is another view of the “Castle” at Ha Ha Tonka State Park. This was actually a large mansion on a bluff overlooking a beautiful valley in the Missouri Ozarks. The man who designed it never lived to see it completed. Due to his sudden death, the property was never properly maintained and the home eventually was destroyed by fire.

This is a very large building and directly behind me is a steep bluff so getting far enough away to get the whole facade in the photo is almost impossible. Also to catch the drama of the lighting from the sunset meant capturing the scene from the dark side of the building. To counter these issues, I used a 10mm wide angle lens and took 5 shots of the right side of the building at different exposures and 5 shots of the left side of the building. Each of these 5 photos were combined in Lightroom using its HDR function. Then the results were combined in Lightroom again using its Panorama function. These results were then edited in Photomatix.