I did a lot of riding last summer, and I mean a LOT!! So much in fact that I am just now beginning to dig through pictures from the last few years. On one ride we found this view from an over look. We are along the river on the Minnesota side, but I’m afraid I can’t recall exactly where 🙂 It was another of those views that you know a picture will not do justice. After finding the perfect shot with gods own frame, I tried some regular shots which turned out to flat. I also attempted a panorama that is nice, but not what I was looking for.
I decided to do a multiple exposure and hope for a decent HDR to punch the killer clouds and bring back some depth to the image. I did a 3 shot manual exposure with my Nikon p300 (point and shoot) trying not to move much. YEA RIGHT!! I’m just glad modern software does well with aligning and ghosting!! I exported the shots direct from camera into Nik HDR Efex 2. I am literally brand new to this software and was excited to play. After merging I was relatively happy and added a bit of punch. I found the foreground was a bit distracting, so used Focalpoint 2.1 to add a bit of blur to soften things up a bit. Added a little edge darkening and am happy with the result.
It was a balancing act with the clouds and the town. I warmed up the town a bit, and cooled down the sky to give better definition.
Jasmine - Beautiful!