# Bursting Sunrise ~ HDR



## Over Exposed (Jun 16, 2011)

My lady and I took a trip up to the family farm in VA. last weekend to pay a visit and spend some time on the Cowpasture river which flows through the property. I woke up almost instinctively around my normal sunrise shoot wake-up call time and couldn't get back to sleep. I decided to get on up and put on some coffee. As the first light started to lightly illuminate the sky I saw the beautiful clouds that were floating by. I grabbed the camera and tripod and strolled a hundreds yards from the porch for this vantage point and was not disappointed.


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## 480sparky (Jun 16, 2011)

I'm not disappointed either.


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## ImKosher (Jun 16, 2011)

That is beautiful, this has to be one of my favorites!


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## mjbine (Jun 16, 2011)

Very well done!


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## McNugget801 (Jun 16, 2011)

Pretty nice but just a tab over cooked with the mini halos all over the place.


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## 889Media (Jun 16, 2011)

Felt the small size did not do the image justice, so had to go check it out over at your Flickr account! Very nice capture, and I love what you did with it PP. Sweeet HDR!


Best regards


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## spacefuzz (Jun 16, 2011)

beautiful. I can tell its a bit cooked, but I dont think overly so because it lends the image some of its drama.


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## tron (Jun 17, 2011)

a little much on the tone mapping for my taste  but still a nice pic!


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## sirsleepsalot (Jun 17, 2011)

Very impressive shot ! I do agree with tron though in that personnaly, I would've tried to go for a slightly more natural effect.


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## CaboWabo (Jun 17, 2011)

Wow is all I can say nice job sure hope mine can come close i am a noob at it thanks for sharing


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## TwoTwoLeft (Jun 17, 2011)

Nice job!  Anyone who says that's "overcooked" just doesn't get it....


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## Hardrock (Jun 18, 2011)

Outstanding!


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## lyonsroar (Jun 18, 2011)

This is the kind of HDR most people who shoot HDR aspire to shoot one day.
:thumbup:


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## photosanity (Jun 18, 2011)

!!!!


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## Kstorm (Jun 18, 2011)

Absolutely beautiful!


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## johnh2005 (Jun 19, 2011)

Fantastic!


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## SensePhoto (Jun 19, 2011)

Bit over done, love the picture though


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## Destin (Jun 19, 2011)

Hands down, this is my favorite HDR shot I've ever seen! Simply Beautiful!


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## Balastrea (Jun 20, 2011)

Beautiful!! Can I ask what software you used, and did you shoot in multiple exposures, and if so how far apart? I am a total noob and am so "jonesing" to get into some HDR!


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## kgenny (Jun 20, 2011)

I really like how it turned out and I agree the way you edited adds to the drama of the photo, gj!!


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## nstevens (Jun 20, 2011)

Wow, that looks great! What software do you use to merge your HDR shots?


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## johnh2005 (Jun 20, 2011)

Balastrea said:


> Beautiful!! Can I ask what software you used, and did you shoot in multiple exposures, and if so how far apart? I am a total noob and am so "jonesing" to get into some HDR!



Hi Balastrea, and welcome to the Forums.  You should do a google search on HDR and that will probably answer your question.  Just a quick note from what I have read about it so far.  You basically set up your camera (usually on a tripod) and set it to automatically (or you can do it manually) take a series of pictures one right after the other.  You "bracket" it to take, say 5 photos.  The first one will be proper exposure -2 stops, then -1 stop, +/- 0, +1, and +2.  then you use a piece of software that will search each photo for the best exposure of each one and it sorta "snips" that out of each photo.  It then stitches them all together and gives you a fully properly exposed photo that otherwise would be impossible due to the brightest parts of the photo being much brighter than the darkest parts.

I KNOW I probably did not use the proper terms and probably did not explain it exactly right.  It was the best I could do and a google search will help you a lot more than my babble =)


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## GreatPhotoRace (Jun 20, 2011)

Gorgeous.  Agreed with others however about it being slightly overcooked


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## Balastrea (Jun 21, 2011)

johnh2005 said:
			
		

> Hi Balastrea, and welcome to the Forums.  You should do a google search on HDR and that will probably answer your question.  Just a quick note from what I have read about it so far.  You basically set up your camera (usually on a tripod) and set it to automatically (or you can do it manually) take a series of pictures one right after the other.  You "bracket" it to take, say 5 photos.  The first one will be proper exposure -2 stops, then -1 stop, +/- 0, +1, and +2.  then you use a piece of software that will search each photo for the best exposure of each one and it sorta "snips" that out of each photo.  It then stitches them all together and gives you a fully properly exposed photo that otherwise would be impossible due to the brightest parts of the photo being much brighter than the darkest parts.
> 
> I KNOW I probably did not use the proper terms and probably did not explain it exactly right.  It was the best I could do and a google search will help you a lot more than my babble =)



Thank you - it is all so intriguing! I can't wait to try this out!


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## Over Exposed (Jun 21, 2011)

Wow, thanks so much for all of the C&C everyone! I took off for the weekend and was shocked to come home to so many replies. I am incredibly grateful. 

I'm not surprised at all by the highly cooked comments. This image was left in the oven more so than any other piece I've done. I fought the urge but ultimately after a couple of hours of going back and forth decided to land my light smoothing around mid-hi, but my micro and highlight smoothing is very low. I wanted to keep the drama of the light rays without using mod-layers in CS4. I'm usually one to pull my images out of the oven earlier, but the cook time just felt right to me on this one. I can certainly understand it being a detractor for many of you though.

As for my HDR program of choice, I use Photomatix. After going through trials of all of the programs I could find, Photomatix just seemed the best fit for me.


Balastrea, I should add that with really dynamic scenes like this one, many more exposures over a broader range are needed. It's not uncommon for me to use 10-14 exposures when shooting into the sun like this.


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## myshkin (Jun 21, 2011)

the composition is real nice in this shot. The fence setting the foreground with the rays and great sky. The processing is a touch too strong imo. There is some odd light spots on the trees and grass that seems unnatural. I would try to brighten the dark areas of tree or darken the light areas to even things out alittle


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## EGphoto (Jun 30, 2011)

What a great capture!!


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## Balastrea (Jul 11, 2011)

Over Exposed said:
			
		

> Wow, thanks so much for all of the C&C everyone! I took off for the weekend and was shocked to come home to so many replies. I am incredibly grateful.
> 
> I'm not surprised at all by the highly cooked comments. This image was left in the oven more so than any other piece I've done. I fought the urge but ultimately after a couple of hours of going back and forth decided to land my light smoothing around mid-hi, but my micro and highlight smoothing is very low. I wanted to keep the drama of the light rays without using mod-layers in CS4. I'm usually one to pull my images out of the oven earlier, but the cook time just felt right to me on this one. I can certainly understand it being a detractor for many of you though.
> 
> ...



10 - 14 exposures? Wow! And Photomatrix will process them all together or do you only select a few from those?


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## Over Exposed (Jul 11, 2011)

Yup, it will process them all at once. I'm not sure what, if any limits, photomatix has for number of exposures. I'm sure there is, I've just never run into any issues so no need to research it.


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## photography1 (Jul 11, 2011)

Great looking photo. Congrats.


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## ekool (Jul 11, 2011)

Beautiful picture. That's how HDR is supposed to be used.


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