I went geocaching with my son today. The cache we went to was "Decew Detour". This was a physically challenging cache as it required scaling a cliff by rope, sliding down a treacherous muddy hill, and getting across a (small) river. The first stage cache location was at the upper falls of the Morningstar Mill, an historic grist mill, saw mill, blacksmith shop, living museum, park, and interpretive center.
I took this picture from the resting place of the first stage cache:
Well, actually, it is a combination of two images.....
This was my first attempt at combining multiple images with different exposures to approximate a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image. There were a few obstacles, as I didn't have a tripod. For reference, here are the two source images I used:
- First I followed this tutorial that shows how to use Hugin (which I have used for making my panorama photos) to align two images.
- Next I blended the resultant images in GIMP using a technique that uses a greyscale copy of the darker image as a mask.
- Lastly, I flattened the image, scaled it down, boosted the colour saturation of the red and green channels, and did a "smart" sharpening using this technique that sharpens mainly where there are edges, rather than the whole image.
Being my first attempt, I think it came out OK. There is some fringing around the trees because the sky exposed image blurred a bit. Oh well, live and learn!