Black Balsam Bald

About a week ago I saw the post of Black Balsam Bald by Richard Bernabe which inspired me to hike out their and see the place for myself. It was absolutely beautiful, but none of the pictures I took do the place justice. I got out there before sunrise, but it was so cloudy that I did not get any shots of the actual sunrise. About an hour afterwards the sun did start peeking through the clouds giving off some nice 'God beams'. I do not have any graduated neutral density filters, do I took two different exposures and blended them. I was wondering what you guys thought of this shot. I think that the color might be a tad off, but I'm mainly concerned about the huge blowout in the sky. Although I kind of like it, is it too distracting? Thanks.

Canon 40D @ 18mm

Sky exposure:
ISO 100
f/8
1/250 sec

Foreground exposure:
ISO 100
f/8
1/60 sec

Well, you certainly found my spot

The composition is right on but the white blob in the sky is somewhat distracting. It looks like the Mother Ship is ready to descend and land.

Yeah...I did find your spot didn't I. I kept walking around up there wondering where you took that lovely shot, and I thought that this might have been the place, but I did not know for sure until I got home and looked it up. I'm not trying to 'steal' it though, and BTW your shot is way better than this. This place is so close to where I live and it's such an easy hike that I will definably return! Hopefully next time I will have better light. Most of the pictures that I took that morning turned out like this, and I guess that the only way to control such bright light would be a HDR, but I do not have the software to do those, and besides most of the time HDRs look too fake (IMHO). I also just noticed that the distant mountains look blurry. That must have happened with post possessing or saving for the web, as the RAW file is really sharp. I'll have to check in on that.

I shoot up at black balsam quite a bit - it is a wonderful spot. the composition and the light on the fg are outstanding, but the sun is a little too blown out for my tastes. that's a really tough exposure with the sun being that bright and creating such a high dynamic range.

Being from flatland Florida I envy you living near an area like this.

I think the "blowout" distracts from the great colors that you did capture. If it could be toned down without losing the surrounding color, I think it would help. SandyLee

You might try recovering some of the highlights and toning down the sun in Photshop but I bet they're too blown to do much with. You'd probably need 4-5 f-stops range to get a good DR of this one. Just for information sake, what were your 2 exposure settings for this merged image?

Larry

PS--I'll be in Asheville Oct 24-29 where is Black Balsam Bald?

Thanks for the comments/critiques everyone. The exposure for the sky is too far gone to recover, I tried before i posted. So I will have to go reshoot.

Larry: Black Balsam Bald is located off of the Blue Ridge Parkway between Asheville and Waynesville. If you are coming from Asheville you want to get onto the parkway and travel south (toward Waynesville, GSMNP, Cherokee). Travel the parkway about 25 miles then turn right on Black Balsam Road (FR 816) just past milepost 420. Go down just a little bit and you will see a little pull over on the right where you can park your car. Start the trail on the same side of the road that you park on. This will be the Art Loeb trail. Follow it up until you reach the balds (about 1/2 mile). Have fun!
Also the Mountains to Sea trial branches off to the right...do not take this trial, just stay strait on the Art Loeb trial.

Daniel--thanks for the info I ow have it marked on my GPS unit. I was planning on driving down that way (especially since the northern section is closed) one day so maybe I'll plan it so that I can be there at sunset--Larry