I know, I know, but the clouds were really cool again.

I know this is like the 4th or 5th shot of the Bridgers...but the clouds have been soooo epic it just needed to happen. I was just getting out of class, and I happened to look out at the mountains. The clouds were just hanging in an inversion layer half way up the slopes. It was amazing looking, I had to capture it.

But I knew I should do something a little different. So instead of doing another b/w, I did a panoramic in color today. It was early in the morning, so the sun was just beginning to peak through the clouds and shine on the peaks. The overall tone was very flat and someone bleb, and in an attempt to correct that a bit I shot bracketed sequences to make HDR later. This would hopefully add some colors back as well as contrast that I was wishing for.

Some other things I changed, I shot wider to include more of the foreground and make the photo more about the landscape in general rather than just the mountains. I also shot from a tripod, so everything was nice and level, easy to composite later.

I shot at f10, ISO100, 1/125. Nothing special. Just what worked at f10.

For editing, I went straight to Photomatix Pro, and batch processed the photo using my "mountains" preset, which I made for this photo. It is essentially a tonal compressor, meaning it just takes the complete tonal range of the scene that was captured in three shots, and compresses it into one photo. I modified it a little to have more mid tone contrast. I wanted the photo to look fairly natural, not too over processed like I do a lot. Not that over processing is bad, I just wanted something different tonight.

In Lr, all I did was lower the whites a bit, and then add some clarity to the mountains. Pretty simple. Again, I wanted to make it fairly natural.

See you tomorrow!