Dark foregrounds in sunrise/sunsets

[whun2]

Luckily I had my camera with me today as I was planning to shoot later in the afternoon. When I walked out of my house on the way to work I saw a gorgeous sunrise so I tried capturing it. I got the colors of the sky but the foreground is so dark. Any tips on how I can get this kind of picture to show the foreground as well as capturing the colorful sky during a sunrise and/or sunset? Here's the 1st one I shot that really captured the colors of the sky:
_DSC0573 by Wes Hunt, on Flickr

As I tried to adjust settings to get the foreground clearer, I lost the colors in the sky:
_DSC0579 by Wes Hunt, on Flickr

 

[Ysarex]

You can shoot and save raw (NEF) files. Make sure you have a full sensor exposure and process the NEF file by hand. Otherwise the software in your camera can't do it.

Joe

 

[480sparky]

Welcome to the wonderful world of limited camera dynamic range!

You can either, as Ysarex suggests, shoot raw and use the plentiful data contained therein to get what you want, or learn how to create HDR images.

 

[Ysarex]

Here's an example:

Not a sunset but a similar condition to your problem. On the left you see the photo created by the camera software. In taking the photo what I did was make sure the brightest highlights in the sky were recorded on the sensor. I saved the raw file and processed it myself to get the photo on the right. You can't get your camera to create the photo on the right -- your job.

Joe

 

[JonA_CT]

A couple of things:

First, in that particular photo, the foreground isn't that pleasant anyways...I might prefer it as a silhouette regardless.

Second, in addition to what the fine gentleman above said, you also need to be a bit more specific in the way that you try process the photo. It looks like you just adjusted the exposure. If you are using LR (I couldn't tell because the EXIF data is stripped), you should look on youtube for videos that show how to use the Shadows and Highlights sliders, and another one that shows how to use a graduated filter. Both of those will help you to be able to raise the shadows in the foreground without having to lose detail in the sky.

 

[Didereaux]

If you rely upon post to dig out detail from the shadows remember that the noise, ALL of it, is in the dark portions, the darker the noisier (no matter the ISO or any other setting). The solution (as much as there is one without adding extra lights for the foreground) is to get some graduated ND filters and use them to slow the shutter speed for the bright areas allowing more exposure for the darker ones. then you can make minor tweaks in post without getting all that noise in there.

But as said in previous posts this particular shot has nothing to offer in the foreground and should probably stay in silhouette.

 

[whun2]

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I totally agree the foreground has nothing to offer. I literally snapped these before I got in my truck to go to work. I am in the process of getting some of the filters mentioned. I will learn to use those and clean up the pics in post. Thanks again!

 

[Derrel]

There are a couple of ways to handle this situation. The first is to pick a smaller or closer up object to show in a silhouette, something with an interesting shape is useful like a small 10 to 15 foot tall tree or Majestic Oak Tree in silhouette as the foreground object of Interest. As alluded to above by another poster the foreground must actually be interesting. As Sparky mentioned, doing multi-shot HDR Imaging is a very workable technique. Something like a three-stop hard-edged neutral density filter would also be very useful to bring the sky and the ground tones closer. Another option some tend to forget about is using foreground flash to illuminate foreground objects so that the foreground is brought up 4 or 5 stops closer to the sky.