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This is one of my very early attempts to photograph the lighthouse at Penmon Point, on the island of Anglesey just off the North Wales coast.
The sunrise on this particular morning was spectacular, with glowing clouds in the sky and gently breaking waves on the seaweed lined foreground.
Problem - as this was high summer the sun was rising directly into my camera (Canon EOS350D at this time) resulting in a huge dynamic range that the poor little sensor in the 350D couldn't hope to cope with. What to do? Well, back in 2006 when this photo was taken HDR software didn't exist (at least as I was aware) so I tried to reduce the contrast between the sky and the rest of the scene by using a 3 stop ND grad filter.
With the benefit of hindsight and a few more years experience I wouldn't have used the filter, instead I would have taken multiple exposures and blended them together in Photoshop with layers and masks to get the correct exposure in all parts of the final image.
However, for this image I only had one RAW file that was clipping both the highlights and shadows of the ProPhoto colour space in which I usually work.
To sucessfully optimise this picture I had to use a 'pseudo-HDR' technique, involving multiple exposure conversions of the original RAW file, HDR tonemapping in Photomatix Pro, and significant messing about in Photoshop to get the level of detail, contrast and colour that I wanted to express in this scene.
It would have been so much easier to have shot it right, with mulitple exposures, in the first place! You live and learn.
Filename - lighthouse 12.jpg
Camera - Canon 350D
Lens - 18-55mm zoom @ 18mm
Exposure - 0.8sec @ f11, ISO100
Location - Penmon Point, Anglesey
This image - 533x800px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Shutter speed chosen to slightly blur the waves.
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