HDR Honolulu City Lights - 1/3/2010

Erick, Jalna and I met to get one last shot of the city lights display. I figured the crowd would be gone so it'd be a great chance for HDR. When I got there at 5:30pm, the only other people there were there were the security guards! I got in a few shots of the outside before it got too dark. I think this is the first time I was able to get the snow people w/o anyone else in the shot...and this was a 3-shot HDR!
I had wanted to do this the past two times here...and I finally got a chance...The HDR of the lights w/ traffic didn't come out like I expected... Mr. and Mrs. santa were still kinda blown out.
As I was folding up my tripod getting ready to get back across the street, I notice Kawaihoa Church looking really cool in the dark, so I decided to take an HDR. I had to change the highlights/shadows in PSE to lighten it since it came out really dark...
After dark, people must've had the same idea and started to show up. I was fussing around so much taking this shot while avoiding the crowd that I didn't know I had cut off the top of the house. I tried to take another HDR of the other tiny toy shop but there were so many people, I was only able to get just a couple shots. I think this house is just the right size for him...
While I was outside earlier, I thought it was so funny that in this perspetive, it looked like I was the dog so I decided to take a shot.
My tripod doesn't work well at this angle so I just took this by leaning my camera on the fence...it was not possible to do an HDR, but the colors of the sky still came out kinda cool.
I guess Jalna and I got the same idea of a 'self portrait'...except we had taken it from a different tree...