Photo of the Week 2010-04-05

a view of the lane

Some images need a little work after the capture to present them in a way that represents the scene as it appeared to my eye.

On a recent photo outing to an abandoned farmhouse with some friends, I was drawn to the view of the lane from an upstairs window. I knew the bright morning sun outside and the dark interior presented more dynamic range than a single exposure could capture. I decided to bracket 3 exposures to process as an HDR once I returned home. HDR is not something I do much of but for scenes like this it can be a perfect solution.

I wanted the scene outside the window with the lane curving down to the road to dominate the image yet have the interior of the room visible. My goal was to keep the "HDR effect" from overpowering the image which proved difficult. I ended up adding a layer mask in CS3 to hold back the interior and adjusted opacity to allow just enough to be revealed.