Tonight I did some more exploration in the area of great falls. I found this spot on satellite imagery, and figured it'd be a good spot if I could get a decent sunset. Well, mother nature surely didn't disappoint tonight, so any failings of the image are DEFINITELY the fault of the photographer, as I couldn't have asked for a more picturesque sky.
Its VERY close to being within one frame's capability, although pushing the shadows that hard would make it grainy and recovering highlights strongly might clip a color. So I take one frame that's the "right" exposure, and then one bright frame and one dark frame. In lightroom, I make the "right" frame look as good as I can even if it means jacking the shadows or highlight recovery, and then I adjust the exposure on the bright and dark frames to match the look of the correct frame as closely as possible (IE the bright frame will clip out the sky, but I will lower the exposure so that the rocks match the right frame, and will adjust the shadows and exposure on the dark frame to match the normal frame as much as possible). Then I go into PS and create new layers, and brush in the bright and dark frames over the main exposure selectively.
What a cool spot you found, you did a nice job here. I am guessing you will be back there for more? It looks like an area with a lot of possibilities for compositions.
Thanks all! I'll definitely be back there, especially as its only about 15-20 minutes away.
So I'm not sure if this is "cheating," but I too another shot from a few minutes earlier with a less-impressive sky but when a heron had decided to pay a brief visit....
Just another little detail that sticks with my memory of the place, even if its compressing time a bit.
(a few other tweaks on processing as well as I move toward printing)
Can't help you with the print medium, but wanted to congratulate you on a stunning shot. I really like the composition with the water running away rather than (as usual) towards the viewer. Great sky as well.
cool scene, i might try to selectively warm the shadow regions a touch though (something like viveza 2 makes it trivial to do that, probably plenty of other ways though) and maybe make the sky slightly more bright compared to the shadow regions to balance the naturalness of the lighting a touch more
the brighter sky in the edit seems more natural although the white water in the shadows seems awfully intense, it seems brighter than areas lit by the sun
