Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, California, near San Jose, is a lovely place to visit any time of year. A week ago autumn colors were fading, but not gone. Looking east in mid-afternoon part of the garden was in full sun and part in the shade of a hill. The widely varying light suggest combing multiple exposures to make a high dynamic range image. The time I used the the Photomerge™ Exposure feature of Adobe Photoshop Elements™ 8.

It was early spring in Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, California. Saratoga is near San Jose, and the Japanese-style gardens cover 18 acres of foothills. I used a pocket camera to take this image (actually a two-image vertical panorama spliced in Photoshop™) of the Pond and Hill Garden. The original image had dark shadows and other technical problems that were adjusted to product this result: