A Walk In The Park

Today I finally got to Tynehead Park. What I was trying to achieve today was some HDR (High Dynamic Range) pictures. I was in the park for several hours taking lots of pictures, some of which I am sure will never see the light of day. I didn't quite get what I was striving for I don't think but I took one that I quite enjoy. 

I took a few pictures over, correctly and under exposed. With this one I used 2 of the images, put them in photomatix and "averaged" the picture. 

The exposure came out fine, bit I wasn't real happy with the framing. I didn't really like the 2 garbage cans in the background. Cropping I couldn't get rid of the garbage cans without ruining the composition of the fence. So in Photoshop elements, I created 2 duplicate layers. The lower layer I used Gaussian Blur and through in out of focus. With the layer mask I masked out the top right corner revealing the the blurry one underneath... It isn't real complicated, I get a little better at these things all the time.