A river runs through it, Colorado
Brisk fall morning in the valley. I have been waiting for fog for about a week, before and after this day, this was the most fog I could get, but there will be next time, someday.
Walking through the river in waders, trying not to slip, looking for the right spot as the sun behind me started to rise.
ISO-100, 1.6s f/16
Single image of the above, no 4 image stack just 1, no merge with dark/light version (so 12 images), and 8 bit vs 16bit processing, and different color processing too
If you click on the image and get dark background, left/right alternates between the 2 http://robertbody.com/images/1000/2015-09-23-silverton-river-8-5d3_2365.jpg
Robert - Colors pop better in the first one, but the sky appears more realistic in the second. The first captures the warmth of the early morning light better (maybe slightly too much so, but that is up to individual preference) whereas the second has some harshness in the rocks to the right side middle.
So for me, I like that the (I may not be using the right terminology here) luminosity of the overall image is "balanced" in the first image. But I also think that it may almost be balanced too much. What I'm trying to say is that when one views a scene like this, the forground bright spots will be seen as being brighter, but our eyes are able to view the detail in those bright areas very well (sort of a human HDR rendering). The bright areas will be bright, but not as washed out as what a camera would render. So the photographer's job, assuming that he/she wants to do so, is to tone those bright areas down closer to what his/her perception of reality was.
So making the bright areas less reflective and bright is definitely the way I would go. But I'm just saying that in this case it may have been too much (talking about the first one).
With that said, I really love how the colors of the trees pop in the first, but I guess I would have tried to bring in the sky of the second and maybe lightened the effect in the water/rock area to somewhere in between the first and the second. Hope that makes sense.
And if that is what it looks like in Colorado right now, man I'd love to be there!!
