Here is one more view of my photo shoot with my friend Jon from Reflected Pixel.
Located at: http://www.reflectedpixel.com/index.html

Jon recently was invited to participate in HDR Spotting http://www.hdrspotting.com/ This is a new web site sponsored by Stuck in Customs http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-photography/

For this shot I had to move fast. This was a three shot panoramic. To achieve the HDR I shot each section with five different exposures. Much to my horror when I opened the pictures I soon learned that I had changed lenses in a dusty location. I had several dust spots in the sky. To clean this up I used the band aid in photoshop.

Before stitching this particular panoramic together I used NX2 to increase the exposure on my raw photos by one stop. I had read recently that when shooting in the snow it is a good idea to over expose by one stop. Since I read this after this photo was taken I decided to experiment in my digital darkroom. I then exported each set of five exposures into photomatix pro to create the HDR photo. After this was repeated three times I exported the photos to Bridge and photomerged them into a panoramic photo.

The next step was to clean up the dust. (my sensor has since been cleaned). My next step was into Lightroom for some fine tuning of the color and then back to Photoshop. At this point I used Topaz Detail to lightly enhance the ice blocks, and then I used Topaz Denoise 3 to reduce the noise created during the HDR process.

This was quite the process, but the end result was well worth the effort.

The specs.

A tripod
A cable release
Iso 200
24 mm
f/22

To get a crystal clear picture like the one above you need a tripod. It is essential in landscape photography.

I like the curves of the sky and the ice.
I like the rich colors of the sky.
I like how the colors are transmitted into the ice.

Let me know what you think, and thank you for visiting this site.

~wr~