Oh, to be this guy. To make along story short, he found some long lost Ansel Adams glass negatives that could be worth up to $200 million!  And get this, he only paid $45 for them.  Talk about turning a profit!!!  Check out the story here.  On another note... Do you think Ansel Adams could be considered the first HDR photographer?  With all of the post-processing he did, I wouldn't bet against it.

OK, on to the photo above.  I took this one on the 4th of July this year while wandering around Lake Georgetown.  I walked the hiking trail that makes its way around the perimeter of the lake.  I came upon this little alcove with a nice rocky little beach on it.  Everything there was kind of bleached out from the sun and water and I thought it would make a nice little shot.  The light wasn't quite right  because the sun was still a little high, but I didn't have time to wait for it to go down, because we were going to watch the fireworks later that evening.  Anyway, I still like the way it turned out.

I did the standard processing for this, but I did have to mask in the little waves lapping up on the beach due to the ghosting that happens during the HDR process.

Other settings include:

Camera: Nikon D90
Lens: Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6D EX DC HSM Autofocus Zoom
ISO: 200
Aperture: f11
Exposure Bias: -0.67
Shutter: 1/320
Focal Length: 10mm
Mode: Aperture Priority
Bracketing: 5 exposures with EVs ranging from -2 to +2 at 1 stop intervals
White Balance: Auto
Tripod: Induro AB0
Nikon MC-DC2 Remote Release Cord

From the blog at http://egearingphoto.blogspot.com