Rita Crane Photography: Sunrise, Little River Cove, Mendocino
During the last Full Moon I got up around 4:00 A.M. to try to capture the moon as it was setting over the Pacific. Now I know why the full moon of November is called the FROST MOON. :o) I was freezing out there, in the dark, in 31 degree weather!! [That shot will need some work.....bright full moon, dark sky, some twinkling lights.....wildly varying exposures needed for such a dynamic range. I haven't processed it yet.]
Since I was up already, and my strong jolt of coffee had started to take effect, I decided to see what ELSE I could find along the coast. After the full moon set, the sky started to turn glorious as the sun was rising. I drove to the closest inlet I could find and hurried to park when I saw the fantastic colors that were painting the water in a way I haven't seen since I lived in the tropics. The luminescent and pearlescent shades of pastel coming from the sky were shimmering softly on the water. But the contrast between the darker land and luminous sky were so great that, unless I was going for a silhouette, I would never be able to capture what my eye could actually see.
So I set up the tripod and took several exposures, thinking this might be the perfect image to use my new Photomatix software on. I manually bracketed about 9 or 10 different exposures, keeping the same ISO of 200. However, when I got home and combined two images using Photomatix's HDR and Tonemapping options, I didn't like any of the results I was getting. They just felt too much like an illustration to me, oversaturated, and didn't represent what I had enjoyed seeing.
So I went ahead and chose the shot with the best overall exposure for the sky and water, and using Layers, put the shot with the good land exposure (but overexposed sky and water) over that first one. Then I erased all sections of the overexposed shot except for the land. Finally, a bit of shadow/highlight work, a touch of contrast, and sharpening. And this is what emerged...........What I saw this morning after watching the moonset!! =)
Rita Crane Photography: Sunrise, Little River Cove, Mendocino
During the last Full Moon I got up around 4:00 A.M. to try to capture the moon as it was setting over the Pacific. Now I know why the full moon of November is called the FROST MOON. :o) I was freezing out there, in the dark, in 31 degree weather!! [That shot will need some work.....bright full moon, dark sky, some twinkling lights.....wildly varying exposures needed for such a dynamic range. I haven't processed it yet.]
Since I was up already, and my strong jolt of coffee had started to take effect, I decided to see what ELSE I could find along the coast. After the full moon set, the sky started to turn glorious as the sun was rising. I drove to the closest inlet I could find and hurried to park when I saw the fantastic colors that were painting the water in a way I haven't seen since I lived in the tropics. The luminescent and pearlescent shades of pastel coming from the sky were shimmering softly on the water. But the contrast between the darker land and luminous sky were so great that, unless I was going for a silhouette, I would never be able to capture what my eye could actually see.
So I set up the tripod and took several exposures, thinking this might be the perfect image to use my new Photomatix software on. I manually bracketed about 9 or 10 different exposures, keeping the same ISO of 200. However, when I got home and combined two images using Photomatix's HDR and Tonemapping options, I didn't like any of the results I was getting. They just felt too much like an illustration to me, oversaturated, and didn't represent what I had enjoyed seeing.
So I went ahead and chose the shot with the best overall exposure for the sky and water, and using Layers, put the shot with the good land exposure (but overexposed sky and water) over that first one. Then I erased all sections of the overexposed shot except for the land. Finally, a bit of shadow/highlight work, a touch of contrast, and sharpening. And this is what emerged...........What I saw this morning after watching the moonset!! =)