Sunrise over Eagle Lake

beautiful place and nice shot! :)

Combination of shooting technique and digital darkroom. Would

appreciate suggestions for learning opportunity.

Really nice exposure in the foreground. The sky is almost blown, and I think it would have benefited this image if the sunburst were sharper. Have you tried exposure blending?

"Exposure blending" - I assume your talking about AE bracketing and then later blending for the best overall look. Never done it. Guess I'm gonna have to jot down another ToDo on my 3x5 receipe card for Landscapes; "set auto bracketing - On." Sounds like a fun learning opportunity.

Dave, actually if you shoot RAW, there's no need to bracket. What I mean by exposure blending is mounting your camera on a tripod, shooting in manual mode, keeping the same aperture and choosing differnt shutter speeds. Of course this will give you differnt exposures. You pick a shot you like that has good exposure in the sky (it will be dark in the foreground) and you pick another shot that has a good exposure in the foreground (overexposed in the sky) and you blend them to achieve a good overall exposure. You can eactually do this with several shots, not just two. Here's a few examples of some images I got from exposure blending:

2 shots blended

 

5 shots blended

Will, those are great images. Awesome composition. Amazing colors. Do you know how I would do the blend through Photoshop Elements?

Does PSE have layers and layer masks?

It definately has layers. It just doesn't have all the functionality as Photoshop. But there is usually a way (albetit longer) to accomplish the same thing in Elements. I'll do some more research online. Thanks.

If it has layer masks than you're set.

Very nice composiiton and colors, completely different atmosphere as compared to the foggy shot. Will is right with his comment about bracketing, I do this almost everytime when I have my tripod with me. Just curious: why f:22 ? AFAIK, each lens is prone to diffraction when stopped down so far.

Why f/22? Ah, well Carsten...let's just say I'm still pretty much a newbie when it comes to serious landscape photography;-) This shot was one of several I took at a local area lake (about six blocks from my house) where I was practicing with hyperfocal focusing. Actually, after taking a critical look at the shot I embarked on some rather serious research that led to this post over at the Luminous Landscape discussion forum (my most disciplined experiment with hyperfocal focusing can be seen in this post). All of that is to say, you're right, f/22 is less than steller, I know that now;-)

 

Still, this image turned out pretty good for one of my first serious attempts. I also had some success with applying a nic Efex warming filter to the shot. In the original the sky was blown out. I applied a graduated orange filter to the image overall, with most of the emphasis on the blown out sky. So, I am learning there are two parts to this creative process - what we do in the field with camera in hand, and what we do at the PC with mouse in hand;-)