Wahkeena Creek

4 images blended to get the shadow detail I wanted.

Comments appreciated.

John, great job blending the exposures. I can see the added benefit of shadow detail. I like the shot. Well done.

One of my favorite spots up there... you did a great job with it!

Very cool! I like how the tree kinda grounds the whole shot. Nice job blending, was it an HDR?

Jeremy, I've tried HDR with some of these types of images and have never been happy with the results. The greens loose their lushness and the contrast falls apart. This is a 4 layer blend where I use masks to bring out parts of each of the 4 exposures for the final result. This way I can paint with my Wacom tablet the faster shutter speed version of the water for more water detail but then paint a mask to bring out the brighter colors of the slower shutter spped version for parts of the foilage. I love to work this way

I've suffered up at that area, John, and never came away with anything this nice.

Nice indeed! I'm liking the balanced exposure in this very much! My only nit would be to crop in from the left to just past that bunch of water in the middle left. That 10% or so on the left IMHO isn't really adding much to the image.

Richard, that might be a very good call. I like the focus on the water that the crop would provide. Thanks for the suggestion

I enjoy working with masks that way also, just curious. I find HDR works pretty well for some architectual work I've done for clients, but rarely get one I'm happy with of a landscape.

Fantastic image, John.

I work with layers much the same way you do. A nice trick to make layer masks is to press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+` (next to 1 key) which creates a selection based on the brightness of the visible layers. You can then use this as a mask, invert, blur and/or adjust levels to hide or show the parts you want.

I took a few shots back in April of the EXACT same composition.