Stormy shoreline, Lake Tahoe

Our trip to Lake Tahoe in October wasn't all bears and salmon, as we took a drive around the lake on Sunday afternoon. It was unfortunately a rainy day, but we did get periods of time without precipitation, which provided a chance to shoot some landscapes with a wonderfully dramatic sky. This shot is from the Sand Harbor area on the Nevada side of the lake during a mostly dry walk along the shore.



Since the sky had such wonderful color but was rather bright, I thought this would be a good chance to take some bracketed sets and try my hand at HDR for the first time. This is a combination of 3 frames, each one stop apart. I'm not sure that this was the most ideal situation for requiring a blended exposure, but compared to what I was able to do in a single frame in Lightroom it did seem to help a bit. I was able to retain more of the color in the sky, while still keeping the rocks evenly lit in the foreground. This is definitely something I need some work with, but it was a fun exercise all the same.



I've included a "making of" shot, courtesty of my lovely wife, since she takes such great pictures of me taking pictures. I had to laugh when I saw this one too, because I know she was chuckling at me during this shot since I had just explained how I would need to go to the furthest rock I could reach in order to get just the right composition. Of course, when I compare the results of my HDR efforts to what came out of my wife's point and shoot in auto mode, perhaps it wasn't worth the trouble!