# Padre Island = worst vacation ever



## BoblyBill (Dec 7, 2009)

This was not a very good vacation with the sunburns, fire ant bites, and getting monsooned on in my tent at 4:30 in the morning; but I like this picture from the trip.


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## pharmakon (Dec 7, 2009)

Stunning. If it were mine I would frame it.


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## PatrickHMS (Dec 7, 2009)

pharmakon said:


> Stunning. If it were mine I would frame it.


 
+1

I totally agree!


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## wiredhernandez (Dec 7, 2009)

Great pic... And I love Padre too...


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## WimFoto (Dec 7, 2009)

great shot:thumbup:

the light on the bridge is one of the many things that are great about it.


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## PhotoXopher (Dec 7, 2009)

Frickin' amazing... beautiful shot.


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## Phranquey (Dec 7, 2009)

Definitely a framer...:thumbup:


I think that one was worth a few miserable moments.


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## IgsEMT (Dec 7, 2009)

something good had to come out of it


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## Jeni (Dec 8, 2009)

I agree, that shot seems like it'd be worth all the horribleness of the trip.

Beautiful photo. I've got nothing bad to say about it.


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## Overread (Dec 8, 2009)

Phew one of your best I think!
Certainly worth the torments of the trip to get


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## wescobts (Dec 9, 2009)

I too agree, wonderful shot, subject, lighting are spot on. there must be a reason God put fire ants on the Earth, but to this day I've never figured it out :lmao:


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## JoeDif (Dec 9, 2009)

PhotoXopher said:


> Frickin' amazing... beautiful shot.



+1  :thumbup:


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## epp_b (Dec 9, 2009)

Wow!  That alone is worth the horrible trip you endured! 

Honestly, though, the worst weather for vacation is usually the best weather for photographs.


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## Pugs (Dec 9, 2009)

Fantastic!  Is the horizon line leaning to the right?

It really is a great shot!


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## Azriel (Dec 10, 2009)

well done


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## Wolverinepwnes (Dec 10, 2009)

AMAZING, is it a HDR


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## Nikkor (Dec 10, 2009)

Print that sucker on canvas and hang that mess up! That's breathtaking! Well. Freaking. Done.


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## Yemme (Dec 10, 2009)

I absolutely love it.... wow.


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## --ares-- (Dec 10, 2009)

I love the great range of values. Good stuff. 

Go get this printed and framed!


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## Dominantly (Dec 10, 2009)

HOW?!?!


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## BoblyBill (Dec 12, 2009)

Wow... thanks guys for all the comments... wan't expecting that. I'll answer the "how" questions when I have the time.


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## BoblyBill (Dec 16, 2009)

Wolverinepwnes said:


> AMAZING, is it a HDR


 
Yes, it is but I did not proccess it like most people proccess HDR's.



Dominantly said:


> HOW?!?!


 
Well... where to begin...

I started off with these three pictures.

Dark:






Mid:





Light:





I took all these in raw and darkened the dark shot by a 1.1 of a stop. That's the reason it looks much darker than the other two. When I looked at these three shots, I noticed that the dark shot produced the sunrise I wanted while the light shot produced the walkway and forground that I wanted, but doing an HDR of these two shots from a auto program did not at all get the image that I saw in my head nor the image that I saw when I was there. 

So, I transfered each of these shots into photoshop and laid the mid and light shots on top of the dark making sure they were all lined up (apparently my tripod moved a little between the three shots). 



Next I made a layer mask on the mid and light pictures, and started to soft paint black on the mid's layer mask to start to take away the sky from that layer exposing the dark layer's sky and sunrise. I worked on blending the horizon by very carefully controlling the amount of the dark layer was showing and making a nice transition to the mid layer as you went down the picture. The top of the picture is 100% the dark layer and it slowly transistions into the mid and light layers. 

But that still didn't give me an image that looked right so I had to mess with the blending modes by right clicking on the light layer and going into the blending options, and taking the shadows and the mid-shadows from the light layer. This effectively uses the shadow areas of the layers below the light layer and only shows the color values that are above that which I select. Here's a screen shot of what I'm talking about.






See the part that says blend if. This lets you know that I have taken all the values from 0-108 out of the light layer and fading all the values from 108-184 so that all the values 185-255 that the light layer has is being shown.. Fading the 108-184 effectively makes all the color values of 108 somewhere around 1.3% opacity and 184 around 98.7% opacity.

This got me a good balance of the sunrise in the background and forground but the picture as a whole was very uncontrasty and desaturated. So, I added a curves layer to lighten a bit and add contrast. I added two saturation lvls that controlled the forground and background separately. Even after I had added saturation to the picture I could not pull the greens out of the grass so I painted a layer of green (layer 3) on the grass and set that layer to color blend. Finaly, the picture to me was to cool so I warmed up the shot a bit with a color balance layer.

Over all, I think this shot took me 3 hours to do.


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## Canosonic (Dec 16, 2009)

No doubts. It's great. Worth the damage, maybe?


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## Rider (Dec 16, 2009)

Bravo!


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## MATTY_T (Dec 17, 2009)

Awesome photograph, I love it! :thumbup:


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## vh5150 (Dec 17, 2009)

that is beautiful


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## Dominantly (Dec 17, 2009)

Holy crap... Thank you for the write up on how you did it. 
I'm not sure my Jedi PS skills are quite up to that task. I just picked up CS4, so I might try and give it a shot..


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## AtlPikMan (Dec 17, 2009)

Sorry the Vacation sucked but, Boy did you  come home with a Stunning Capture.


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## rjackjames (Dec 19, 2009)

awesome shot.


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## DadeCountyAnthony (Dec 19, 2009)

Nicely done.


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## newbie06 (Dec 20, 2009)

that picture is crazy nice...ahaha...


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## helloyo53 (Dec 20, 2009)

I'd be framing that one for sure!


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## jeroen (Dec 21, 2009)

Wow, that is a great photo


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## v-dubber (Dec 23, 2009)

frammer for sure


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## Jhamb (Dec 23, 2009)

WOW! that photo is EPIC!!!


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## ILovePlaya (Dec 24, 2009)

Nicely done!
Like how it goes left to right.
Brightness to darkness.


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## PushingTin (Dec 24, 2009)

Stunning photo - sorry to hear about the unpleasant trip but at least you got a superb photo out of it. all the best


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## BoblyBill (Dec 28, 2009)

peekay said:


> Wonderful! Very inspirational  Thanx for sharing the how-to.


 
Not a problem! 

Thanks all for the wonderful comments!


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## Pugs (Dec 28, 2009)

This really is an example of a tasteful and appropriate use of HDR.  Normally, I'm not a fan, but this is an example of how to use it in a way that emphasizes the photo rather than the post-processing technique.


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## Linkin (Dec 29, 2009)

WOW!  Definitely one for the wall!  Sorry you had a crappy vacation... atleast you got a stunning photo from it ^_^


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## BoblyBill (Jan 11, 2010)

Pugs said:


> This really is an example of a tasteful and appropriate use of HDR. Normally, I'm not a fan, but this is an example of how to use it in a way that emphasizes the photo rather than the post-processing technique.


 
Thanks Pugs. that means a lot coming from you!



Linkin said:


> WOW! Definitely one for the wall! Sorry you had a crappy vacation... atleast you got a stunning photo from it ^_^


 
Thanks Linkin


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## The Empress (Jan 11, 2010)

Fantastic shot!!!! It would be worth the bad moments for me


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