Pictures from a short Thursday night out in Des Moines. Is this great or what?
(by the way, total cost of tonight’s night out….. $6)

Chicago is famous for many things, but it’s pizza has to be one of the best. Every trip I make to Chicago includes at least one visit to Giordano’s Pizza. They make a mean stuffed crust pizza that is good enough to drive all the way to Chicago for. Recently I stumbled upon a book, in the public library of all places, that shows you exactly how to make a wonderful Giordanos style stuffed pizza!

The pizza that you make looks and tastes like authentic chicago stuffed crust pizza, because it is!

The total prep time is about 15 minutes, not including the hour to let the dough rise. Making it is more fun than going out. I use a spring-form cheesecake pan to make the pizza. (The spring form pan has a snap on the side that releases the sides of the pan so that you can easily remove it from the pizza when it is done.)

There are many wonderful recipes in the book, but the crust recipe on page 78 and the sauce recipe on page 82 makes a stuffed crust pizza that will keep you from going out for pizza.

When it was time to return the book to the library, I went to Amazon.com and bought my very own copy of the cookbook. $16 delivered. (Cheaper than one pizza!)

Done properly, HDR is a combination of several bracketed exposures combined to make one GREAT exposure. It is an excellent tool.

Unfortunately, getting three exposures of people in a candid style is difficult at best. Most of the time, you can get one good exposure. With a little more effort, you can still make a good psuedo-hdr photo out of the single image. These are some samples of images that I have made HDR-like using a single raw image from the camera. Enjoy!

Mark

Note the difference between real HDR and Psuedo-HDR. See the post below

Here are a couple of pictures done officially with HDR. Three exposures in each one, combined for great effect. Notice the difference between this and Psuedo HDR in the post above.

Mark

This is very well done and is what I would call real art. Stop motion photography is my next project. I would love to make something like this.

There is a stupid youtube ad that comes up. Click the tiny x on the ad and you will not see it the rest of the video!

Fun in Des Moines <-Photos are here! Fun times! Des Moines has a great feel, the buzz here is real. No matter your mood you can find a place to match it with so many great establishments.... Mark