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A cold, bright winter's afternoon in Snowdonia, North Wales, and the landscape is bathed in light and shadow as beams of sunlight pierce the clouds like searchlights and track across the scene in front of me.
I'm standing at the head of the Nant Ffrancon valley, looking up towards the cloud wreathed peak of Tryfan, trying to work out how best to photograph this scene while trying hard not to be rendered incapable by the beauty passing before my eyes.
There's no way I can faithfully record what I'm seeing in a single exposure, the dynamic range of the image in my viewfinder far exceeds the capabilities of my camera's admittedly impressive digital sensor.
In the end I go for a five exposure bracket, with each exposure one stop apart, hoping I can rely on HDR post-processing to make sense of all that data.
The problem in going for an HDR approach in a situation like this is the movement of the fast moving clouds between frames, which in the past has caused unsightly ghosting in the final processed image.
However, with the latest versions of Adobe Lightroom and Photomatix Pro available I ended up with this lovely final picture, with detail visible from highlights to shadows, and the clouds rendered without ghosting.
A conversion to monochrome was the finishing touch, enhancing the visual drama of the final image.
Filename - nant ffrancon 02.jpg
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 32mm
Exposure - Various @ f11, ISO100
Location - Nant Ffrancon, Snowdonia, Wales
This image - 800x533px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom + Photomatix Pro
Comments - Multiple exposures used to capture dynamic range.
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