Sunset over southern Stockholm

Sunset over Aspudden

Sunset over Essingeleden

Sunset over Snowbird

The power of polarization

The same view as yesterday. Light hand on editing -- a bit of color boost, but not even all that much. Most of this is good exposure and a gorgeous sky.

Candy HDR in Snowbird

The view from the balcony of my hotel room at Snowbird. This one a somewhat egregiously treated HDR version.

Golden Gate Bridge in sunset

Golden Gate Bridge in sunset

Marin headlands in the sunset

[CA Roadtrip] Enough with Big Sur already!

Instead, have the gorgeous sunset light we caught the Golden Gate Bridge in!

[CA Roadtrip] A sky on fire

[CA Roadtrip] A sliver of blue

[CA Roadtrip] The problem with HDR…

…is sometimes I just can get it to look just right. Here's what'd be a gorgeous use case for the technique: a sunset. Shot into the sun that just barely hides behind a cloud. In front of us, red plants on the ground. A -2.0/0.0/+2.0 exposure bracket certainly gets us everything we need in terms of pixels.

But a straight up and down HDR can't quite distinguish between the darkness of the plants, and the darkness of the darker bits of sky, so we can't quite get the balance right. Gradiented filters just look awkward. So it is in with the mask we go!

A first attempt, I mask with exposure modification while still in Photoshop with 32 bit, before I even flatten the image down from the full on HDR master:

but it doesn't really look good. Possibly because of me being still too clumsy with the masking brush, possibly some other reason, but it doesn't come out quite the way I had hoped.

Second attempt, just layer the +2 and the -2 exposures, and mask in the flowers from the lighter onto the sky and ocean of the darker one.

If anything, I'd feel this looks worse. But then, I'm not sure. Maybe this could've been saved with better brushing in Photoshop. Maybe you all really like this and I'm just being my usual obnoxiously perfectionist self.

I honestly don't know.

[CA Roadtrip] As the fog settles and the sun sets…

…everything takes on a reddish hue…

[CA Roadtrip] Sunset over Big Sur

[CA Roadtrip] Lux dei ad lucem hominis

The Piedras Blancas lighthouse outside San Simeon as the sun starts to set.

Sun sets on Geary

Sunset over Stanford

Salmon sky over Stanford

And as I leave my office for the holidays, I turn around, look up, and see the most extraordinary red coloration on the fluffy clouds rolling in from the hills in the west.

A sunset romantic moment

The two snuck out in the middle of the feast inside, and stood, in perfect silhouette against the setting sun, in one perfect kiss.