Click on the image for licensing terms
The first snow of winter at the end of November 2016 was gracing the peaks of the Carneddau mountains in the Snowdonia National Park, North Wales as Liz and I took a drive past some of our favourite views on a beautiful sunlit afternoon.
Driving up the Ogwen valley, with the Glyderau on our left and the Carneddau on our right, was just sublime, and I couldn't pass this scene by without stopping in a handy layby to capture the view on camera.
With the sun rapidly setting behind the Glyderau to the southwest, a line of shadow was marching up the flanks of Pen-yr-Olwen, so with no time to lose I set up my camera and tripod to take the photo.
Then I hit a problem with contrast, in that the sun shining on the snowy peaks was exceptionally bright, and even with a neutral density graduated filter fitted I couldn't prevent the snow from blowing out, while still retaining some detail in the shadowed area at the bottom of the frame.
So I took five seperate exposures, each one stop apart, and blended them together using the 'Merge to HDR' function in Abode Lightroom.
The resulting file showed nice detail in both the brightest and darkest parts of the image, and only required a bit of tweaking in Photoshop to bring out the best in the final picture.
Filename - mountain snow 02.jpg
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 60mm
Exposure - 1/30 sec @ f11, ISO100
Filters - Polarising filter used to enhance colours and two stop neutral density filter used to balance exposure.
Location - Ogwen Valley, Snowdonia National Park, North Wales
This image - 800x533pxpx JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop
Comments - HDR blend of multiple exposures
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.