I got up at 5:30, walked down the street from the Sheraton, and had this beautiful view almost to myself (you can see the ghost of a family that got up early to enjoy it as well).  This is Millennium Park, the Cloud Gate (aka, the “bean”), and the many skyscrapers of downtown Chicago.

This is my first HDR using Nik’s HDR Efex Pro, and I’ve got to say I’m pretty impressed.  It’s the first HDR software I’ve used that I liked as least as much as Photomatix.  Very intuitive, I was done with the tone mapping less than 10 minutes with no instructions or prior use.  I really liked the “u-point” technology for controlling the brightness of the reflection of the sky and clouds, really helped save me time.  Of course, I did all the typical Photoshop work I always do after to bring the effects back closer to reality.  Very happy I picked up the whole suite of Nik software at WPPI…