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Surely one of the most photographed scenes in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, this is Dream Lake, accessed via a lovely hike up from the Bear Lake trailhead through forests of pine and golden aspen trees.
My wife Liz and I made this trek early on in our two week stay in Estes Park, having gained 10,000 feet in altitude from our sea level home in North Wales.
So, understandably enough, we were a bit puffed by the time we reached Dream Lake, which suited me as a half hour break was just what I needed to explore various photographic opportunities.
The weather was mixed, which was good as we had patches of cloud and light tracking over the scene, adding interest and dynamism that would have been missing under full sun.
My only problem was the contrast, with the intense late morning sun pushing the brightness of the white clouds well beyond what my camera's sensor could cope with while retaining detail in the darker parts of the scene.
Normally I'd reach for the ND grad filters at this point, but the non-linear horizon ruled out this option - I didn't want to put an obvious dark line through Hallett Peak and the forest flanking Dream Lake.
So in the end I plonked my camera on my tripod (I knew I'd carried the thing up 500 feet for a reason!) and shot 5 exposures of the same scene, each 1ev exposure value apart, making sure my darkest image had no blown highlights, and my brightest image had no blocked shadows.
The five exposures would enable me to produce an combined HDR image once back home, squeezing all that contrast into a single image with visible detail throughout, which is just what I did to make this picture.
I used the new 'blend to HDR' function in Adobe Lightroom and was really pleased with how realistically the software combined the five DNG files, without producing any of the unfortunate grunge effects normally associated with this technique.
No doubt I'll be using this approach again in similar circumstances.
Filename - rocky mountains dream lake 01.jpg
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens - 17-400mm zoom @ 17mm
Exposure - various shutter speeds @ f16, ISO400
Location - Dream Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, U.S.A.
This image - 800x533px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - HDR blend of multiple exposures
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