PBPhoto

Sunrise Guard Tower, originally uploaded by paggre.

This is my second trip to this guard tower trying to get something that I like. I like this. The first trip I did not bring my lighting rig. So everything was just silhouetted against the sky. Not bad but not what I wanted. I wanted detail in the chair and sand. So any of you expert landscapers help me out. I figure I need a graduated filter to accomplish that.

So I also tried an HDR'ish kind of approach. I took 3 exposures and combined them. Tried 2 approaches to this as well. One was a script for the gimp. The other was tufuse for windows. Tufuse worked the best but still not the look I was after.

So for this I had one bare flash and took a few shots to aim the flash the way I wanted it. Then I just kept the ambient exposure down 1 stop and brought up the flash power until it looked good to me.

Sunrise Again, originally uploaded by paggre.

OK. Another shot of the same sunrise. Incorporated the idea suggested that I have more of the bridge and some of the palms in the foreground. The colors are amazing. Thank you Lord. Still, I want to find some more interesting things to put in the foreground. I do not really like the palms or the bridge for that matter but that is where I was so I used it. I should have used said bridge to make my way to the beach.

Landscapes definitely take time. You have to find a good location. Have an interesting sky. Wait for just the right light. I'm not there yet.