This image of Scenic Falls Hamilton Ontario is one of the more challenging images that I have created in quite a while. The sun was quite harsh on the top half of the hill and I was down in some pretty dark shadows.This drastic dynamic range made it a perfect candidate for HDR. I set out by capturing a 5 image/5 f-stop sequence. With the lack of colour at this time of year I made sure to use a circular polarizer to bring out as much colour as possible. As well, since the flow of water was quite slight on this visit I stacked on a variable neutral density filter to cut out light. Doing this allowed me to have rather long exposures which gives the appearance of a greater flow of water.
Post Processing
All of my images are initially downloaded from the memory card to my hard drive using Adobe Lightroom 4. For this image, 5 initial images were combined using Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro 2 then to finish adjustments to various colour values and saturation were made, as well a slight vignette was added.
Details:
- Location: Scenic Falls, Hamilton
- Camera: Canon EOS 7D
- Lens: Canon 24-70L
- Focal Length: 24mm
- Aperture: f/22
- Shutter Speed: 2.5 sec., 5 sec., 8 sec., 20 sec., 30 sec.
- ISO: 100
- Metering Mode: Pattern Metering
- Tripod: Manfrotto 055CL
- Manfrotto 486 RC2 ballhead
