This is one of my favorites from a two year assignment in Korea. Brings together the traditional temple architecture as well as the natural beauty of the mountains in the "Land of the Morning Calm!"
Image was created using Nik Software HDR Efex Pro 2 export from Lightroom 4.3. Fantastic way to combine three exposures and really bring out a great shot. Very fast and easy to do. Selected a strong enhancement to the colors to help bring back some saturation lost due to overcast day. Balanced the final exposure towards the -1 stop image then brought back highlights while creating the HDR image. Additional dodging and burning in Lightroom with some additional sharpening and contrast control as well. Wicked fast to do this in Lightroom verse taking over to Photoshop. Also makes it so easy to go back and adjust previous changes since all work is done in meta data and does not mess with the original image. Plus allowed me to keep all images in the same folders and be able to retrieve easily when needed (like for really cool photo contests....).
Picture from Seoraksan Mountain area (East Coast) of South Korea. Camera was K5 shooting in RAW with Pentax 18-135 and polarizing filter. No tripod, but wish I had to have been able to stop down a bit more for better sharpness.Overcast and rainy day, very low contrast light overall but this picture did get blessed with a bit of sunshine to bring out some color to an overall drab day. Exposure 1/100 at F5.6 (main exposure, camera bracketed two additional shots at -/+ 1 step [shutter speed]) ISO 400, lens set to 24mm focal length. Shake reduction turned on.
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