1612_0256 Frozen
Standing on the frozen pond, I saw the sun coming up behind the trees and knew I had to include it in the frame: I wanted a touch of warmth to balance all the cold blue ice and frost. But I also knew the contrast range was far beyond what I could capture.
Enter the HDR mindset. I don't use HDR processing often. This time I did. With camera on tripod, I made seven different exposures. Later in Photoshop, I selected three (for highlights, dark areas, and middle tones), and made minor adjustments before blending them in Nik Effects HDR, selecting the preset that I liked best. Back in Photoshop, I tweaked the composite. I generally find HDR too contrasty and garish, so I did some selective desaturating, then went to bed.
Next morning, I saw that I had desaturated too much and sucked the life out of the image, so I added a bit of saturation and vibrance - especially to the sky - until the scene resembled my memory of it fairly closely. We can't reproduce reality, but I tried to place the viewer beside me on that frozen pond, with the sun rising. And without the cold.
It was unbelievably slippery, by the way. I had left my crampons in the car, of course, so I navigated the pond ice by collapsing my tripod and pushing it ahead of me like a walker. Run, walk, crawl, whatever it takes...
Photographed in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2016 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
1612_0256 Frozen
Standing on the frozen pond, I saw the sun coming up behind the trees and knew I had to include it in the frame: I wanted a touch of warmth to balance all the cold blue ice and frost. But I also knew the contrast range was far beyond what I could capture.
Enter the HDR mindset. I don't use HDR processing often. This time I did. With camera on tripod, I made seven different exposures. Later in Photoshop, I selected three (for highlights, dark areas, and middle tones), and made minor adjustments before blending them in Nik Effects HDR, selecting the preset that I liked best. Back in Photoshop, I tweaked the composite. I generally find HDR too contrasty and garish, so I did some selective desaturating, then went to bed.
Next morning, I saw that I had desaturated too much and sucked the life out of the image, so I added a bit of saturation and vibrance - especially to the sky - until the scene resembled my memory of it fairly closely. We can't reproduce reality, but I tried to place the viewer beside me on that frozen pond, with the sun rising. And without the cold.
It was unbelievably slippery, by the way. I had left my crampons in the car, of course, so I navigated the pond ice by collapsing my tripod and pushing it ahead of me like a walker. Run, walk, crawl, whatever it takes...
Photographed in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2016 James R. Page - all rights reserved.