I know you can get normal-looking images using HDR. One of my photography teachers who was also a photography wizard used to do it very effectively, but I still prefer the old-fashioned Photoshop way. The principle for this sort of images is that you take two or three shots of the same scene with different exposures, one exposed correctly, one underexposed, and one overexposed, and then blend them together. I haven't got a proper HDR software, so I just tried it with the Photoshop 'merge to HDR' button. Here is what I got:
It's probably hard to see at such a low resolution, but the sun area looks very pixelated and burned out.
Now here's my own version using layers:
I know it's quite subtle, but I find the result much more satisfactory. And it allows more freedom to play around. I did this by using my underexposed image as background. It was pretty much all black apart from the sky and the sun. Any other exposure would have burned out the colours in the sky, so this is the only way of taking an early morning shot like this. I then added my normally exposed shot on top, deleted the sky part of the photo using the gradient tool, and set it to luminosity. I then added a very gentle curve to boost up the contrast slightly, and there we go. Here is another one on the same principle:
Setting the second layer to 'luminosity' mode gives the image a slightly surreal look that I like, but you also lose some of the colours. Here is what happens if you leave it to 'normal':
But at the end of the day (or at the beginning rather!) good landscape photography comes from good lighting, and that is really about being at the right place on the right day. This image was taken a few minutes after those first ones, when the sun was a bit higher. It has hardly any Photoshop adjustment:
That's all for today! If anybody wants to ask me questions about techniques, please feel free to email.
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