Long Tail (HDR)

The story of this photo

View the Before-and-After Comparison to see where this photo comes from!

One thing that I have learned about creating HDR images is that “time is a great advisor”. – Watch out! I am in a Zen mood today! – LOL

I regularly go through my archives looking for shots that I have neglected for one reason or another so far. With experience comes a change in the way you look at older shots, and sometimes you discover something that you would not have seen a few months before and you bring that out in post-processing. This is one of those photos.

It was shot in the Phang Nga area in Thailand just before we got onto that boat to take a tour to the James Bond Rock and Ko Panyi.

How it was shot

• Handheld [details]
• Three exposures (0, -2, +2 ev) autobracketed and merged to get and HDR
• Camera: Nikon D90
• Lens: Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 18-200mm 1:3,5-5,6G ED VR
• Details can be found here

How it was tone-mapped

• HDR created from the 3 JPEGs
• Tone-mapping: Photomatix Pro 4.0 (Detail Enhancer)

How it was post-processed

• Post-processing was done in Photoshop
• Topaz Adjust on the entire image to get back the colors and the details (less aggressively on the sky) [details]
• Topaz Denoise on the entire image (more aggressively on the sky) [details]
• Topaz Infocus on the entire image for sharpening
• Saturation layer on the water (master, yellows)
• Curves layer on the water to enhance the reflective look
• Saturation layer on the sky (master, blues)
• Levels layer on the sky (increased contrast)
• Topaz Detail on the sky to bring out the details in the clouds
• Sharpening using the high-pass filter [details]
• Watermarking

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