Monsoon Finale
© Joe Bridwell
Sun’s last blaze does a truly wonderful job of turning nearby cloud underbellies to gold filigree while creating a fantastic golden carapace for our distant horizon.
© Joe Bridwell
Sun’s last blaze does a truly wonderful job of turning nearby cloud underbellies to gold filigree while creating a fantastic golden carapace for our distant horizon.
June's Weather
I, for one, have been absolutely delighted with June's cool weather. Mindful weather controls so much of gorgeous photography, I always look ahead to predictions a week out for storms so Magic Light can be my photographic companion. As I look ahead today, it begins to look like we are finally going to have high pressure create blazing hot days and turn on the air conditioner. Until real monsoon season, that means potentially blah photography.
Yesterday was one of those days when, contrary to a relatively normal weather stability, nothing seemed constant. A noon shopping spree had foreboding clouds over the Sandia's with dust skittering in the parking lot. I get home; the skies are clear. Late afternoon; a thunderstorm sits in the Bear Canyon drainage making me turn off studio computers. Early evening; looking east, the mountains are a dull gray. Was it worth getting out?
What's Tonight's Weather Going to Do? But I recently found a place where you can do sunset with an unimpeded view across the Rio Grande to distant Mount Taylor and environs.
With such variable weather, I knew trekking to that place, setting up, and trying to capture a high dynamic range (HDR) sunset might become a total waste. But, that is the life of those who chase Magic Light!
About five minutes after sunset, 15 HDR panoramic images (+/- 2 EV) quickly slipped onto the CF card.
Processing
As we've pointed out before, even with high ISO sensors, noise is a pernicious aspect of HDR capture. Add the fact that there would probably be chromatic aberration at the land-sky boundary and you've got a few things to reduce.
First, I Stacked all images based on a four second capture in Lightroom 2. Five images at a time, I Tone Compressed with default settings in Photomatix. Three resulting tiff files were Merge (d) to Panorama in CS4.
CS4 returned the pano to LR2 where we promptly provided Luminance noise reduction in Details tab. Carefully examining the horizon, we found chromatic aberration as well. We Defringed All Edges with both red/cyan and blue/yellow slider modifications.
The pano was slightly Tone Mapped in LR2. Medium contrast in Tone Curve made our response better. A little Fill Light to move shadows to darks, Clarity, and just a touch of Vibrance for that delightful cloud filigree...
Luck of the Irish Consider the following variables; highly variable weather during the day, no clear indication of a gorgeous sunset, everything literally 'up in the air...'
I'd have to come down on the Irish conclusion...
Monsoon Finale is a gorgeous sunset (and not a half bad image)!
Enjoy...
I, for one, have been absolutely delighted with June's cool weather. Mindful weather controls so much of gorgeous photography, I always look ahead to predictions a week out for storms so Magic Light can be my photographic companion. As I look ahead today, it begins to look like we are finally going to have high pressure create blazing hot days and turn on the air conditioner. Until real monsoon season, that means potentially blah photography.
Yesterday was one of those days when, contrary to a relatively normal weather stability, nothing seemed constant. A noon shopping spree had foreboding clouds over the Sandia's with dust skittering in the parking lot. I get home; the skies are clear. Late afternoon; a thunderstorm sits in the Bear Canyon drainage making me turn off studio computers. Early evening; looking east, the mountains are a dull gray. Was it worth getting out?
What's Tonight's Weather Going to Do? But I recently found a place where you can do sunset with an unimpeded view across the Rio Grande to distant Mount Taylor and environs.
With such variable weather, I knew trekking to that place, setting up, and trying to capture a high dynamic range (HDR) sunset might become a total waste. But, that is the life of those who chase Magic Light!
About five minutes after sunset, 15 HDR panoramic images (+/- 2 EV) quickly slipped onto the CF card.
Processing
As we've pointed out before, even with high ISO sensors, noise is a pernicious aspect of HDR capture. Add the fact that there would probably be chromatic aberration at the land-sky boundary and you've got a few things to reduce.
First, I Stacked all images based on a four second capture in Lightroom 2. Five images at a time, I Tone Compressed with default settings in Photomatix. Three resulting tiff files were Merge (d) to Panorama in CS4.
CS4 returned the pano to LR2 where we promptly provided Luminance noise reduction in Details tab. Carefully examining the horizon, we found chromatic aberration as well. We Defringed All Edges with both red/cyan and blue/yellow slider modifications.
The pano was slightly Tone Mapped in LR2. Medium contrast in Tone Curve made our response better. A little Fill Light to move shadows to darks, Clarity, and just a touch of Vibrance for that delightful cloud filigree...
Luck of the Irish Consider the following variables; highly variable weather during the day, no clear indication of a gorgeous sunset, everything literally 'up in the air...'
I'd have to come down on the Irish conclusion...
Monsoon Finale is a gorgeous sunset (and not a half bad image)!
Enjoy...
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