First attempt at HDR photography

Hooligan Dan · Mar 16, 2008

First off, I've never been much of a landscape photographer. I just don't have the eye for it. But I was on my way to shoot at a Moose Club dinner type thing tonight when I saw the clouds in my rear view mirror. They were beautiful so I had to stop. No tripod on me so I had to make due with leaning up against a fencepost and hand holding it. The lines don't quite match up perfectly between the 5 exposures, but I'm happy with the way the shots came out considering it's my first time trying HDR. The sunset was taken after the dinner in a bank parking lot. Same deal. No tripod.

What do you guys think? The tree in the top left corner of the cloud shot bothers me, but the sequence I took without the branches in the shot didn't line up well at all during the merge. I also did a poor job of cloning out dust but these were just tests so it didn't matter much to me. I shot them with the work camera(canon EOS 1D-the old 4 MP one). On monday I'm getting a D300 to replace my old D100. I'll try this stuff some more when I get that.

LaFoto · Mar 16, 2008

You should!
For despite the fact that you say you don't have "the eye for landscapes", these photos say much the contrary to me. To recognise that lovely cloud for what it could do to a photo means having "the eye", in my estimation!

I wonder how different the photo would have been as a single exposure, maybe with a bit of tone mapping later?

Where are you to be seeing all those vines?