Workplace Respite
This little area of solitude is located in the heart of Santa Ana, CA near the T-Mobile building just off of the 55/405 freeway.  I believe it's meant as a break area where employees can loiter, smoke, and snack before heading back to their cubicles.  This was the second time visiting here in 10 years; I found and photographed this spot with my father's Minolta SLR back in 1992, when I was taking a high school photography class.  That was back when we had darkrooms, developer, and rolls of 35mm film.  Since then, i've had a framed 8x10 B&amp;W photo of this on my wall and decided it needed to be updated for nostalgia-sake.

Captured with my Nikon D700 and 14-24mm/f2.8 on an extremely windy evening. 7 auto-bracketed exposures at 1ev intervals (-3ev to +3ev) and joined in photomatix.  Re-import into LR3 and exported tonemapped image, -2ev, 0, and +2ev exposures as layers into CS5.  Applied dodging/brushing; applied Topaz DeNoise to smooth out the sky before masking it in; added overlay/high pass filter layer for sharpness; saved/exported back to LR3.
california travel reflection water night nikon peaceful socal serene santaana tmobile costamesa hdr macarthur d700 travelhdr d7001424mm