I want to go back to Yosemite with a bunch of fur-friends for a camping trip ^^ I remember hiking up to the waterfall (like you did with Athus) and go swimming in the cold water again <3 *hugs*

*nods* it's an amazing place. After Athus and I went up there, I was determined to see about having him bring some of his coworkers the next time we went. He liked the idea and we were going to see if we could make it happen this year or next.

Just be careful not to fall in the rapids like I did XD

I almost did, they are some slippery steps xD

my feeling is that there isnt enough density on half done as well as other highlight for and HDR approach. look at the original ansel adams i think it was also on a clear sunny day http://www.artvalue.com/auctionresu.....er-2344420.htm .

Oh, believe me there was. The shot exposed for the water was completely blown out on the highlights of the trees and the sky with Half Dome. Adams used other techniques to achieve the same effect as HDR. His print technique was very specialized and complicated. At the end of the day, my shots most certainly needed it. I can show you the two originals that were used to create the shot. Moreover, I used the polarizer in different positions in each shot as the effect was tailored to each exposure. In the sky exposure, the polarizer was turned to maximize the blue in the sky. In the reflection exposure, it was turned to maximize the water reflection (which also coincided with the MINIMUM blue in the sky). The sky polarizer position coincided with the least reflection in the water.

I also wanted to practice manual HDR blending more XD It's a really tricky thing to do in some pictures. This was the easiest picture to do it on yet for me, so it was a good beginners photo to do it on.

well my feeling is you could achieve a similar effect with digital photography. The on thing you missing from what adams did is he waited for a time of day/year where the sun even when it was high in the sky was perspectively slightly behind and to the side half dome so the mountain had some shadows and a lot more density. Its technically possible to get more dynamic range from a manual hdr than a black and whit negative has. I am not saying its easy or this isnt an impressive result but it could be done. anyway its nice work i might fiddle with it more see if you cant get hald dome a little darker and i actually would love to see the raw files for this

I will agree that the trees and Half Dome are a bit bright. After I put it up I realized I had left them too bright. I will make the edit and reupload.

I am under the impression that film has a larger dynamic range than DSLR's, even in his time. One advantage in film is that you can slightly under expose the darks and slightly over expose the lights in a single shot and "fix" it by dodging and burning...which retains the original data and doesn't alter the data, just shifts its offset (same idea as a grad filter, only at the time of printing). In digital that isn't the case and some compromises are made by interpolating or averaging as the bits ranges are fixed. Photoshop algorithms have to go in and fill in the gaps if you attempt to artificially spread the histogram wider in a certain area, or have to average two neighboring areas of a histogram if the move is to compress.

Shooting in two separate, independently proper, exposures and you can maintain the data more accurately in those key areas. Now the compromise is that you now have to "interpolate" the spread at the boundaries of the separate exposures. It's arguably more work this way, but at least this way the subject/s of importance and greatest attention (highlights and darks) are not the areas that take the brunt of the interpolation or averaging. The areas of focus can best retain their original data, accurately.

...you know, I haven't actually sat and thought about it in this way before. This is something to consider at the time of taking a shot, whether it would be better to expose for a single frame and spread the histogram on that exposure (the most important parts of an image are in the midtones), or to attempt an HDR of whatever exposure number or spread, and combine in photoshop (the most important parts of an image are in the highs and darks or contrast of the two).

Yes black and white film has far more dr in one exposure than a Dslr. Even the d800 witch is a triumph of dr isn't there. But there are severe practical limits on what you can do with a negative in plrinting to get dr and there is a limit to how much dr is there at all. In a manual hdr if you are doing it anything like I have there is no practical limit to dr you can shoot as many frames as u want. It's just a bear to post process. You also can easily process a raw file to make a jpeg with the whole expanse of tone a raw file recorded. Even ansel Adams couldnt get everything from a negative. So there is more dr in a negative. There is even more there you can use if you are a master printer, but with multiple expsures Digitally you have truly unlimited dynamic range

Might be a glaringly dumb question but you are using photo shop for this correct?

I've been using the Nikon software for any post processing and it gives you limited flexibility with what you can tweak. Do you shoot a mix of shots that are unedited and processed or do they all go through the same treatment before you decide they are ready for viewing? More curious than anything else to be honest. Plus, don't know if I have the money to drop on PS right now either. x3

I shoot entirely in RAW. I have auto white balance enabled. As long as you shoot in RAW, there's no point in worrying about white balance, it's a 1/10 of a second fix in post processing. The camera does no other processing for me (that I'm aware of). I then take it strait into photoshop (via Camera Raw). Camera Raw does the same thing as Adobe Bridge, just without all the hassles of Bridges goofy file management eccentricities that drive me nuts (at least from what I can tell they are basically identical on a per image basis). I only use Camera Raw really to fix any chromatic aberration, vignetting, or distortion. I also use it to change the camera profile setting. I don't even do white balance adjustments in Camera Raw anymore, I use a threshold technique in Photoshop that's proven very effective.

Photoshop is certainly where I do the bulk of my editing takes place.

There are ways of getting photoshop. Student discount is a good one (can just sign up for a class to get the email, buy it, and drop the class XD), and then there are "other" ways XD.