Many thanks to JokersSoul, Shadowi6, and RianBotes for kindly offering feedback on this image at my request. With their help, this photo underwent a number of iterations--and improvements--before finally arriving at its present state.
This is a manual HDR combination of four exposures. I don't have Photomatix and I don't know anything about HDR support (or even if there is any) in Photoshop CS3, but I do know how to use layers. So I did.
For those who might wonder about this sort of thing, this is actually a sunset--I am almost never awake for a sunrise.
The shoreline of the lake is not flat. I wasn't sure how to handle this issue, but I decided to leave it sloping down to the right because the treeline slopes up to the right. To my eye, the result looks balanced.
PP:
- Four separate exposures into separate layers in Photoshop
- Mask out improperly exposed portions of each
- Blur the water (1.6 seconds exposure was not enough for smooth water)
- Crop and resize
- Fiddle around with Topaz Adjust layers (Topaz broke when trying to run it on the full-res version)
- Sharpen
- Clone out some minor imperfections
- Some color work (fix distracting reflection on the right)
- Bit of final dodge & burn and desaturation (trees were too green)
... it boils down pretty simply, but I probably spent an hour sitting and waiting for the right moment to hit the shutter, and then at least three or four hours editing, reediting, discussing, reediting again. I hope this is well received and that the DPC voters aren't too tired of HDR landscapes yet.
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Well done! Im glad this did so well for you and this being a free study makes the score and placing one not to be scoffed at. Your efforts certainly produced fruit.
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