Tsaina River Rapids

This is one of my favorites because it was a combination of opportunity and complicated technique and processing. An example of the many things I've learned in the last few years.

The opportunity was in the fact that the low and bright sun that intensified the fall colors and lit up the clouds and snow was accompanied by a dead calm that allowed me to deal with the extreme dynamic range by shooting multiple exposures. It is very rare in the mountains to have blue skies and sun with no wind. There was a second advantage to the no wind part also. The only place I could set up the tripod without trees and brush in front of me was on a tiny little rock outcrop directly on the edge of the cliff. It was precarious enough without wind!

I shot 4 exposures, from one extreme to the other and blended them with Paintshop Pro's "HDR Merge" function. I'll include a sample of the original frames in a comment below, to show why it wouldn't have worked with a single shot.

I hope you look at the larger version. It has much more presence.