Earlier this week, I was in Madison, South Dakota doing some commercial photography for J-Gable. The client was driving, so I was a passenger for this trip. On the way home that afternoon (about 60 miles) I was blown away by the light and the blowing snow creating a very moody look.
As soon as I made it back to Watertown, I turned my truck back south chasing that great light. The blowing snow had disappeared, but I still found several good shots as the sun was starting to go down.
Taking photos with snow is always a challenge. Getting the exposure right can be tricky. I’ve been shooting a lot of auto bracketed photos lately so that I can combine certain images into HDR shots. Being it was REALLY cold and windy, I thought I’d just continue to shoot that way to make sure I got the shot. So, I composed my shot, made my best choice on exposure and bracketed by 2 stops. This gave me one at the exposure I selected and two underexposed and two overexposed.
With the sun setting I had very bright highlights (sun and snow) and some dark shadows (tree line and farm). Turned out this was one of those great opportunities to use HDR pro in Photoshop CS5 to merge these different exposures.
I tweaked the final product using onOne’s Phototools and I think this image really reflects what it felt like on that day on a lakeshore beside the old Meridian Highway (US 81)!
ISO 200, 1/50 sec, f/13 – Nikon D300
Happy New Year (and stay warm!)
