The view from a balcony of a friend's house looking out over a shaded valley, which on a cold and frosty morning at about sunrise just looked stunning. How to capture this? Big difference in exposures between the valley and the sky, I reckoned it was at least 4 stops when the sun actually rose. I took the three photos above with exposure bracketing set at +- 2 stops, jamming the camera into an appropriate position (yes, I forgot the tripod).
I have never had much success with dropping shots on top of one another and then 'just erase the sky'. They never looked right to me. So I tried Photomatix for the first time seriously and this was the result.
Not bad.
It wasn't always this straightforward, I took quite a few shots during the 30 mins or so that the sun was coming up, and some came out slightly strange. The sky could end up strongly orange while the valley remained a purple-blue.
I note that CS3 now has something on HD stuff, which I need to take a look at. Also there is the open question hanging in the air on whether to go for the set of ND grads?
