Alaska Photography

I have been taking 3 exposures for years in anticipation of doing something with them someday. These 3 exposures were taken years ago on a trip to Valdez. To identify possible HDR candidates in Lightroom I rate the first photo of a series with 2 stars. Nothing else gets 2 stars in my catalog. If I want to look for photos to import into Photomatix for HDR work I search my database for 2 stars. Doing that today, I came across these 3 photos and exported them to Photomatix from Lightroom.





Normal exposure











1 stop under











1 stop over








You may ask why I only used 1 stop instead of 2 stop exposures. Simple answer, I had no idea what I was doing. Now when I take a landscape shot I take 3 exposures, 2 stops over and 2 stops under. I can then export to Photomatix to try some tonemapping. Not all images are for HDR, but I am finding more and more.

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This one I tonemapped in Photomatix using my high settings which are here.

I then tonemapped in Photomatix with my medium settings here.

This one is tonemapped using my light settings found here.

I liked the medium settings for this image so I pulled it into Photoshop, cloned the signs out, used a neutral density filter and ran noise reduction on it. Click on the image for a larger view. I wish more people would publish their Photomatix settings.

Here is another HDR tutorial with settings for that realistic look. http://www.akphotograph.com/Alaska%20Blog/?p=808

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I redid this image last night. As my Photoshop skills get better, I sometimes go back and try newly learned techniques on old images. I learned some new defringing tools and decided to give it a try on this old favorite. Eagle image taken in Homer, Alaska. Flag image taken in Palmer, Alaska.

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Bald Eagle and US Flag

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