Khoa Minh took the top photo using his Canon 70-200mm lens set at 165mm and f/2.8 on his Canon 5D Mark II. Nice job focusing on the subject and blurring the background, Khoa. The leaf was a nice touch, too!
We've also been doing a lot of HDR photography. However, here's a non-HDR image by Eliot Nierman. This single image has a high dynamic range because Eliot carefully used the adjustments in Lightroom to bring out all the tonal values in the scene. I also like the composition here. I have taken dozen of students to this Buddhist temple and no one "saw" this image.
Nice work, Khoa and Eliot.
More images to come!
Explore the light,
Rick