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Elbow River (8)
Art_R Gold Star Critiquer/Silver Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 200 W: 16 N: 483] (1995)
Hi Folks , today I have this photo of the Elbow River Valley found in a camping area called paddy's flat. it is very near to the Elbow River Falls.

I am hoping that this photo is acceptable for TN , and the terms and conditions :-)

this is an experiment that I have been working on , it is a compilation of bracketed exposures. the technique is also referred to as HDR exposure blending , but I am not sure that can apply to this image as HDR because the software I used has not got the bit depth to handle HDR.

I used the GIMP free graphics program to blend the exposures , using layers and layer masks to bring it all together , the process is rather lengthy to describe and really I have only just started playing around with it , more or less it is like taking the 'right' parts of three images and blending them together.

http://www.instructables.com/id/HDR-photos-with-the-GIMP/

this is the instruction page I found the process on. they are not the most detailed instructions that one will find , I discovered that most of the trick lies in the histogram and levels dialog in the software , I guess that makes sense the three photos all have areas of exposure that are right , and it is best displayed in the histogram and that graph helps to design the layer masks... I think that I will avoid any detailed explanations , I probably don't qualify to give them :-)

the zero compensation image is in the workshop.

thanks for stopping in
regards
Art
Altered Image #2

Art_R Gold Star Critiquer/Silver Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 200 W: 16 N: 483] (1995)
numerical approach
Edited by:Art_R Gold Star Critiquer/Silver Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 200 W: 16 N: 483] (1995)
this is a second effort with this photo set , this time instead of attempting to make 'by eye' levels adjustments , I chose to make equal numerical adjustments to each image and mask. the resulting image was considerably darker , but I think this effect falls onto the area of camera man error :-*)

I think that with the initial image instead of letting the camera choose its exposure that I should have imposed a positive exposure of likely around a 2/3 stop

I edited the compiled image in photoshop to apply some lightness/shadows correction to offset the darkness.

I think that this more numerical approach built a far nicer and colorful image.

regards
Art
Altered Image #1

Art_R Gold Star Critiquer/Silver Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 200 W: 16 N: 483] (1995)
base image
Edited by:Art_R Gold Star Critiquer/Silver Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 200 W: 16 N: 483] (1995)
this is the original image with no exposure compinsation , along with befor and after histograms for the two photos , the before clearly shows the amount of darkness and clipping in the light areas , the after is much better but also still has issues in the light area , that is likely resulting from my trying to lighten the image too much . but I am not positive , it will take a lot of practice and learning for me to fully understand how to blend the images well.

regards
Art