While walking along the Blackstone River Bikeway yesterday, I noticed that water was finally flowing over the Ashton Dam. It's the first time I've seen the flow in months, and I've been wanting to include it in this project. With that in mind, I returned to the bike path today to do a High Dynamic Range composite of the man-made waterfall. There were several interesting vantage points for the photo, but I liked this overlook scene with the reflections in the calm water atop the dam contrasting the turbulent scene below.
The HDR composite was created using 9 photos taken across an 8-stop exposure range. Photomatix Pro was used to merge and tone-map the images. I used a natural filter preset and then adjusted each of the sliders to improve contrast and maintain the natural color tones. (I prefer an HDR style that is realistic as opposed to some of the more extreme styles that are possible.) A mild contrast adjustment was applied as a finishing touch, as well as some mild sharpening and minor tweaks to each of the color channels. The resulting image was saved as a 16-BIT TIFF.
Final processing was in PSE. I loaded the 16-BIT TIFF and, since PSE doesn't support 16-BIT layers, I converted it to 8-BIT. (Breaks my heart to discard 16 MB worth of data.) A simple pop filter was applied in Topaz Adjust. I then adjusted adaptive exposure, regions, contrast, protect highlights, and details. I downward-adjusted adaptive saturation and saturation. A levels adjustment was added back in PSE.
The contrast in colours with the red tree tops and blue sky is beautiful, the detailing on the leaves is also stunning (especially in the high res version) :) I love the reflection too, overall beautiful composition.
This is beautiful. I also really like the contrast in this composition - the calm, reflective water on one side of the dam, and the churning, turbulence on the other. Well done.
