Dear Friends,
Choosing this picture has been pretty tricky. I have spent the last three hours processing a few images, but I couldn't find anything which I really liked. This image would have been so much better with a few clouds, to break those uniform tones in the sky.
I decided to upload this, anyway, since I really wanted to wish you all a fantastic Christmas.
This isnt' my last upload for this year: I will be uploading another picture, next week, as I did HERE in 2009. I have to think about my 2011 resolutions, too!
Back to the image, correctly exposing this image has been really hard! I had to use a 5 stops gradation for the sky, and still I lost some detail in the highlights.
I chose to bracket to gain another stop, and then blend the two differently exposed images to cover the huge dynamic range.
Temperature was well below zero (-7°/-8°) so I could take advantage of the frost which is really visible above the earth, which creates a beautiful contrast.
Hope you like it!
Details
- CANON 5d Mark II, EF 17-40 f/4 L, f/14, 10+5 s, ISO 100
- Phottix TR-90 Remote Shutter
- Lee 0.9 (3 stops) soft GND + 0.6 (2 stops) soft GND
- Tripod
The shot
Shot about 50 km from where I live, a few minutes before sunrise.
This is the same location of my last upload, two months after.
The Processing
Camera Raw
- White balance tuning.
Photoshop
- Blended two exposures using a layer mask;
- Switched to LAB to improve tones;
- Added a few Soft Light layers to adjust light;
- Added a Color Balance layer;
- Resized for the Web (1200px);
- Applied an Unsharp Mask to slightly improve contrast;
- Smart Sharpen + More accurate (On luminosity 'blending mode' with the sky masked off);
- Framing and Signature.
Take a look at it,
LARGE on Black :
Frosty sunrise - On Black
@ You all
Comments, faves and critiques are always welcomed!
