Dodging Sunlight

Here is another HDR image except this one was taken after the sun was well up and throwing very strong light across the middle ground of the image.  The foreground is in shadow and the mountain and clouds are strongly lit.  The exposure range in this image was very wide so I shot 5 images starting at -2 stops and moving up to +2 stops in 1 stop increments. 

My goal is to convey the golden light of early morning without the typical harsh shadowed areas and blown highlights that this type of high contrast light often yields.  With my eyes I could see the warm early morning light lingering in the clouds and even though the direct sun is bright it still held the warmth of early morning.

I still struggle with the idea of so much electronic manipulation but I know that this shot would be almost impossible on film or digitally without some type of layering to balance the exposure.    The best I can get without it looks like this:

The richness in the sky is lost, the yellow glow of the sunlight across the mountains is lost, and most of the details in the foreground are lost.

The elements that come out in the HDR image are what caused me to hit the brakes and set up for the shot as I returned from a sunrise shoot on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I have resisted HDR photography for years but I think the time has come to embrace it.  Camera makers are starting to include crude HDR capabilities in the new cameras.  I have read articles that predict that in the future each pixel in the chip can be a light meter that can be controlled by the computer in the camera.  This type of control will lead to HDR becoming the norm.