Sunrise through the trees

[Lan-Lord]

I took this sunrise photo while scouting for my hunting trip last week. A problem I had with this shot was that the sunlight coming through the trees was extremely bright, yet the foreground and sky details were still very dark. The problem with cameras is that they do not have the dynamic range like the human eye, so it can not capture both extremes in great detail. So in order to capture the vivid colors of the sunrise, and capture shadow details in the foreground and sky, I had to shoot twice, with exposure settings for both scenarios. Then I merged the 2 photos in photoshop to get the best of both worlds.

I know that was long winded, this is best explained with examples. All shots were long exposures, shot from a tripod.

1.) Set the exposure so that I grab great sunrise color. Notice the foreground and sky are under-exposed (very dark)
ISO100, f/22, 4secs

2.) Set the exposure so that cloud and foreground details are captured. Notice the sunrise color is over-exposed (very bright).
ISO100, f/22, 15secs

3.) Use the Photoshop Merge tool to blend these 2 photos together

 

[quailsroost]

Congratulation on your work, you took a photo that would have gone down to the delete button and make it a real keeper.

 

[gil850]

Nice work!