Lower Yosemite Falls - HDR

[dmccabe]

I spent three days at Yosemeti... took over 3000 photos including some panos and multi exposures for HDRs.
This is just the first photo I worked on, and found that any water falls had way too much movement for an HDR merge,
so I cloned in the entire waterfall area from the darkest exposure over the finished HDR merge.

critiques welcomed... 2,999 images to go.

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[bradleygibson]

Nice composition and beautiful ambiance over the waterfall--love the mist.

And nice job on the tasteful HDR--usually my eyes hurt after looking at people's tone mapping/saturation when they do "HDR".

Out of curiosity, from the rendering you've provided, it doesn't look like a high contrast scene (although this could just be the tonemapping).  Did you find you needed to do multiple exposures, or is this just a technique you wanted to try out?

-Brad

[dmccabe]

I might not seem to be high contrast... but the area just above the falls is always in shade and quite dark, and the water is usually pure white. And yes, probably more just tone mapping than a high contrast.

Notice the bottom area of the falls... totally white. I took 6 exposures (only used three for the HDR) for a total of 4.5 stop bracket. The last 4 exposures had the entire waterfall blown out without any detail.
So only two exposures had any detail in the water.

FWIW... this is at 10% size... the original has stunning detail in the trees. Canon 5D mkii with 16-35mm L @ f22.

The one lesson I learned was to bring ND filters next time I am in Yosemite!

[dmccabe]

One more...


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[tived]

great - but where are the photos?

Henrik