This is my first HDR shot, with a variety of other manipulations, briefly discussed below.
 |
| Highway 21, Idaho. Click for larger image. |
Here are two of the four shots that formed the HDR. This is the under-exposed and over-exposed versions (middle-exposures not illustrated). The spread was 1-1/3 stops between each, for a total of 2-2/3rds stop between the high and low.
A grey-card was used to set the anchor exposure and this was a mistake (see this article: Using a Grey Card). The grey-card perfectly exposed the bridge but with sunsets, you should underexpose more than normal to bring out the colors. The bracketing was not enough to save the lower-end colors and the sky still washed out. The scene also lacks contrast. If you look at the high-exposure, there were few shadows.
I did not use the camera's built-in HDR, wanting more control over the process, and I wanted to use four exposures instead of the camera's normal 3-shot range. With PaintShop Pro X4, I blended the shots for the HDR, choosing one of the options called "LocalTone" -- this gave the image a contrasty black-and-white feel, which is visible in the bottom half of the image. Next, I made a separate HDR, choosing more normal colors -- in an effor to preserve the sky. Using a bunch of darkroom trickery, I overlayed the bridge and sky over the first HDR, combining the two. It took several hours to edit and it became the final image.
This scene deserves to be photographed again, for a lot of reasons. To begin, even with the sunset, the sky was uneventful and, in the winter, everything was grey. The other issue was we arrived about 10-seconds before sunset, giving my friend and I only a few minutes to work. It was dark before we could explore other compositions.
The other problem was operational. I am still used to film cameras. Did I bother previewing images on the LCD to check the exposure? Nope. The new Nikon's controls were foreign to me and I had to fiddle for several minutes before I got the compensation and other settings right. Mixing bracketing and exposure compensation got confusing. Lessons learned.
Perhaps later this spring, when the grass is green and the trees have leaves, I hope to mount a second expedition to the same location, and we'll approach the bridge from a few different angles.
Related articles:
HDR Techniques for Stanley Forest Burn
NewPort Baya (Yaquina Bay Bridge)
White Balancing
Using an 18% Grey Card
