Light up the Dark Corners of my Soul © Chris Maskell 2011
So far in this series I have written about planning a shoot before leaving the house; being flexible when at the shoot – open to other possibilities that may arise and being open to different ideas when processing the images.
However, with a plan comes success. One of the shots I had in mind was of the low level sun bursting through the trees, I wanted to shoot this in HDR as I wanted to retain detail in both the sky and the trees.
The above image was captured as I walked back to the car from the Pen Ponds in Richmond Park. The sun was at the right angle and caught my eye as I walked along. I stopped the aperture down fully to create the starburst and fired a set of 7 brackets at 1ev intervals (+2 to -4).
Processing was through Photomatix Pro 4 to tonemap before importing into Photoshop CS5 for minor tonal adjustments.
Camera: Olympus E-500
Processing: Photomatix, Adobe Photoshop
A Brief Moment in Time 
You’ve executed this perfectly man, I love that flare
Thanks Dave. I nicked the idea from last weeks Togchat, Dave Wilson and @Eurapart were discussing sunburst and HDR, thought I’d have a go ifthe chance presented itself.
Thanks for the mention! One of these day’s I’ll figure out the whole “shooting into the sun” thing. For now, though, I’ll keep looking at shots like this one and wonder why I can’t get these to work as well 🙂
Thanks Dave, but as I say, you were the inspiration behind this one.
Fantastic shot Chris! I have only been able to pull this kind of shot off a few times but when they work they’re wonderful.
Thanks Curt. It was a planned shot, I’m pleased with how it came out.
Nice shot! I like the sun bursting through the trees.
Thanks Adam, appreciate the comment.
Cool shot! This is where HDR really comes into its to the fore. No matter how many ND grads you used, I do not think this level of tonal range could be captured any other way but through HDR.
Thanks Mark. I tried not to over cook the HDR, preferring to keep it more natural, but wanting to capture as much range as possible.
I love HDR photography when it’s used well. This is a great example of why! GREAT shot here, Chris, love the details in the entire spectrum you’ve captured!
Thanks Toady