Monday, April 12, 2010

A Little Slice of Heaven




While shooting the stone house in Marble Falls, I turned around and saw the clouds building behind me with Godbeams shining down on a ridge, and some beams were pointing right to a group of separated trees.  I don't think I did this shot justice as I keep getting artifacts along the ridge of the horizon. After trying to burn in the sky in Overlay mode I tried HDR versions and combined one shot exposed twice in ACR, once for the sky and once for the ground...but I don't really know how to combine those correctly, where they meet at the horizon.

3 comments:

  1. I have emailed you with my version of this one. I don't see the artifacts on the size shot you are talking about.

    Consider placing a gradient down to the tree line and reducing exposure almost a full stop. Then bring up the whole exposure about 1/4 stop. See if that doesn't bring out all of the God beams, instead of just the one larger set. The darker clouds also keeps them from looking mostly gray and they become more stormy instead.

    I like the shots by the way. I'm a sucker for landscapes.

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  2. I don't see an email from you with an attachment of this shot...my Comcast account is working again btw. I did apply a gradient on a mask when I added the sky (about a 1 stop darker exposure in ACR) to the shot exposed for the ground but to me that light sky right at the horizon looks strange. I don't have Lightroom and I don't think it is possible to do what you explained in ACR, so do you mean use a levels adjustment in PS to do the correction? How do you know how much you are bringing the exposure up?

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  3. Sorry about that. You should have it now. I used Lightroom 2 to do it. You can actually dial in the precise amount of exposure on your gradient. I don't see the issue about the light at the horizon.

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