Alaska Photography

Took a trip to Valdez last week. I drove from my house in Wasilla (about a 5 hour drive). I timed it so I could witness the sunrise on the mountain range about a hour from my house. I was rewarded with some spectacular scenery. All photos are 3 exposure HDR photos tonemapped in Photomatix.

Valdez Harbor

Sunset just outside of Valdez

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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.

Click on photo for larger view.

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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