20110108 Coral Cove Sunrise 5679

My favorite sunrise spot. I shot probably 150 images this particular

morning to use for HDR processing and wasn't happy with any of the

results. This photo is a single image with a graduated filter applied in

Lightroom and the results are much better than anything I did with

HDR. I would like some feedback on your results with HDR inaging. I

am not against it, I am just getting better results with other techniques.

Very nice. I feel it would have been better if the rocks were brighter. 

Perfect shapes and colors, the lighting is perfecrt and it does it all!

PDE

Why need the HDR as long as you could capture and present here such a beautiful image and maintain the originality of photography, great job and so pleasant to view.

Thank you for sharing it and wishing you all of the best.

The thing with HDR photography that I learned very quickly, is that not all scenes and situations are suited to it's use. The sky can be a huge issue particularly on images such as this when there is intense light and contrast. There are ways round this, you can use the sky from a traditionally processed RAW file like this one, and blend it with the HDR foreground, which in this case would give a great deal more detail in the rocks. Simply use the traditionally processed file as a layer in photoshop on top of the HDR image, then use the eraser tool to expose the parts of the image you want to reveal (in this case the foreground) Another way, avoiding HDR altogether is to use a ND Grad filter to balance the light between sky and foreground. This is a lovely shot, a beautiful sky and with nice movement in the breaking waves, but it could do with a bit more detail in the foreground. I hope this info will help.

Best Regards

Alf

You should try to learn manual blending instead of classic HDR to get a greater dynamic range. Maybe this helps you http://www.hougaardmalan.com/blog/?p=199