I’d like to tell the story behind one particular photo- the cover image from my Winter Park Weekend blog post. It was an overcast day, and conditions were not particularly good for photography. It was the kind of day where if you had any clouds in your picture, it would look white and washed out. But I had an idea, and decided to try it out.
First, I took an underexposed photo:
Actually, not that bad of a shot, especially considering the conditions. That was about all my little point-and-shoot could do.
Then I went to work in my digital darkroom. The first step was to load the photo into Aperture, and create a second version. I then used Aperture’s exposure settings to create a darkened version. Like this:
The next step was to load both of these photos into Photomatix, the software that I use to increase the dynamic range of photos. Normally this software is used to take a series of shots and combine their exposure information. You need to shoot with a tripod to do this, of course, or the shots won’t line up. Since I didn’t have a tripod on my cross-country ski trip, I would have to combine the photo with itself. This resulted in a third photo:
Certainly more interesting- I can see details in the trees, and in the clouds at the same time. Still, it didn’t really create the right mood. So… back into Aperture where I lowered the brightness, and pumped up the saturation to max, resulting in my final photo:
Das Haus von Ruh 