HDR - On That Other Pond
Leaving town tomorrow morning, so wanted to get an HDR in before I leave. Hopefully I'll still be able to tune in between meetings and see all the creations while I'm gone.
The set up: It was last month on May 30th. The sun was rising (sunrise 5:20) on camera left and the moon was setting (moonset 7:34) in the position shown on the photo. I took the single moon photo at 400mm at 6:15, switched lenses and took the 5 HDR photos at around 6:30. It was still very dark in the trees across the pond, but the sky was very bright behind them with just a touch of pink left low in the sky.
Taking the photos: I used my 50D for all. First, the 400mm lens at f5.6, 1/500 and ISO 400 for the moon shot. It was a bit higher in the sky when I shot it than the placement in the photo. Then, I switched to a superwide angle 11 to 18mm lens and shot all the HDR photos. They were all at 13mm, f18 and ISO 100. The shutter speeds varied through 1.6 sec, 0.8 sec, 0.5 sec, 0.25 sec and 1/8 sec.
Putting them together: I tried Photomatix and CS5. Photomatix won, but I still had to do a bit of hand-blending in the water and sky. After I got them blended, I sandwiched in the 400mm shot of the moon. Had to shrink it down a bit, but it is still about 50x larger than the “real” moon that is behind it.
Additional Post Processing: Fotosketcher on oil painting and blended back to minimize the effect some. A bit of cloning to remove the rain gauge from the pier. Intentionally left it a bit dark...because it was. I really wanted to add a moon reflection in the water, but it would have been on the pier, so no go.
I struggle with level horizons and suspect that this one is not, but no matter which way I tilted it, it never looked right, so I stuck with "as shot".
