My wife and I got back from our trip to Iowa on Tues and on Weds I had a couple of Tammadge Market Research Studies to participate in. If you never done one, they will pay you around $100 - $150 for your opinion on anything ranging from cat food and radio stations to virtual computers and remote access to servers. Very cool stuff! You can sign up at their website if you are willing to participate in any of those.  I had a study in the morning located at their main office off of Riverside and Congress.  So I thought I'd grab the camera and snap off a few shots to see what I could get. 

Well, by the time I arrived at Auditorium Shores, the light started to get bad and the haze made it look worse.  I thought I would give it a shot anyway.  I did the 5 bracket thing here using my D90 and the kit 18-108 lens.  When I processed the brackets, they turned out ok, but I didn't think it was anything special.  But, when I hit the black and white converter filter in Nik Color Efex, I liked the change it made.  I also added a little old photo filter to it and them masked in the previous sky.  After that, I left it alone.  I didn't do any noise reduction or sharpening on it.  I think it looks pretty good the way it is.  It does have halos around the statue and the buildings, but the haze and the sun resting behind those buildings sort of gave it that look anyway.  I think the black and white just accentuated it.

Other settings include:

Camera: Nikon D90
Lens: Nikkor AF-S DX 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR
ISO: 200
Aperture: f16
Exposure Bias: 0.00
Shutter: 1/125
Focal Length: 30mm
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