Rainier with a cap hdr

Swarzakguy wanted to see what I came up with shooting Rainier at sunset last night so figured I'd stick it here. Found out how dirty my sensor is and had to do a lot of cloning in the sky. In the trees on lower left is the Carbon river and there's the moon in the sky at right. Moons pretty blurry due to it moving between shots, I guess.

Very nicely done Frog :thumbsup: Looks like you missed one dust speck though, almost dead center in the sky. Wish I had some scenery like that around here :(

Frog, if your dust spots are small, try using the spot healing tool and make the brush just bigger than your spot. If you are cloning try reducing the opacity and the hardness so you dont get those noticable circles. The foreground is nice here and you may want to crop some off the top,

Frog, this is very good. Lighting is great and your comp is strong. Rod has some good suggestions for the use of the clone/healing tool to remove blemishes and dust spots.
A crop from the top, slightly, could improve but for me it could be left as it is.
Wish the moon were larger. Did you take any shots of the moon that time? In the future, you may want to attach a zoom lens and zoom in on the moon and then composite it into your scene. If shooting film, a double exposure would be fun and do the trick, but we have to add the layer in PS with digital.
Great

I thought about doing a double exposure with a zoom in on the moon but a bit unsure how to do that. Would have had to change lenses for one thing. I had removed that center spot after being made awar of it in another place but I think I uploaded the wrong edit.

It's a good one frog! Sure, the moon could be a little larger, but even so the image is atmospheric and very nicely composed.

Cheers
Mike

Your on a roll, Frog!

So after messing about with my meds I decided to clean up the spots and all of a sudden I can't find the post and then I finally see it up here as a sticky and am flabbergasted and humbled again.
If that was you making it a sticky, Gary, thankyou!
I'm going to post the cleaned up image and followed Rods suggestion for the spot healing brush and now that I've used it I will be using it more often.

Congrats Frog!

Congrats frog! Ain't no stopping you now! (as the song sort of says :D )

Cheers
Mike

Wow!!! That is an excellent location! Amazing shot!!

How did I miss this one, Great Shot Frog. Worth a thousand words for sure.

:thumbsup: :cool: :D Way to go Frog!! I really like the colors and foreground detail in this image. You've done a great job of balancing the exposure even if some of it was in the post process. Nice shootin'!

Thanks again everyone. I'm pretty amazed myself how well it came out. One of the few times I decided to shoot for hdr from the get go.
And for the most part is due to stuff I've learned from a lot of people here.

I am not sure how I missed this one. It is a wonderful picture. One of your best. Nice work Frog.

Impressive, Frog.
John

Congratulations on having this photo chosen as this week's Featured Photo, Frog. Just in case you don't know, it will also be in our Featured Photo Archive now. There's a few years of really awesome stuff in there. And that will soon include this photo :)

And I have a little critique.

I don't know what your method was for balancing the foreground and sky. But the halo between the trees and the sky really bothers me. It's super distracting and doesn't look natural at all. That doesn't mean it's not possible, though. I've got tons of tricks up my sleeve. None of my photos are finished in-camera. Most of them have extensive work in Photoshop with masked adjustment layers. If you want some help with this one, let me know :)

Thankyou Greg and John!

PJ thankyou also. I hope you picked the second one that's cleaned up to put in the archive or the bigger one in my gallery.

I'm not sure what you mean by the halo. If you mean that the sky is lighter against the horizon, that's because it was lighter there and its the natural look.
I'm not seeing halo around the closer trees and know what that looks like, usually from over sharpening. Not seeing it myself, of course, doesn't mean its not there as my eyes are probably not as trained as yours.
I've never done any layers or masking or any of that stuff so if you can give me some pointers, I'd be very willing to learn and would appreciate your efforts.
I know I need to bring my photography up a step. email or pm me.
Thanks!