Estes Park Colorado Sunset

jamesl

I spent a week up in Estes Park Colorado in early July with my family. I wasn't really planning on doing a lot of shooting while there. However, we were treated with incredible sunsets just about every night, so I was able to get some good pictures while there. I'm still working through the images, and will try to post them as I finish them:



This is from my first night there. We had basically just arrived, and were in the process of unpacking when I saw this scene unfold out the window. Grabbed my camera and scrambled down the hill from where we were staying to this small lake. The colors were like this less than five minutes, and then it was done.

Technical Details: Shot with Canon 30D and Canon 10-22 lens oriented vertically and at 10mm. F10 and 1/8 second bracketted +/- 1 1/3 stops. 3 Panos created from 8 sources images (total of 24) in PTGui, and then tone mapped in Photomatix. Final work in CS4.

I'm probably going to redo this image, as it's too baked for my taste, but this gives you an idea of how it looked.

Update: I've uploaded a new version of the image, which I think is better.

Thanks for looking!

James

CWSkopec

WOW! Gorgeous sunset, James!

It looks a bit too overdone for my taste as well, but I've yet to come up with my own HDR image that I like so take that with a grain of salt!

Just one little nitpick... You've got a sliver of white in the top right corner

schmoo

once again, James!

I remember a year or two ago when I'd first seen your storm photos. They were great too but man you've come a long way in a short time!

jamesl

CWSkopec wrote: »

WOW! Gorgeous sunset, James!

It looks a bit too overdone for my taste as well, but I've yet to come up with my own HDR image that I like so take that with a grain of salt!

Just one little nitpick... You've got a sliver of white in the top right corner

Thanks for the comments! I didn't even notice the white. I've redone it a bit more subtly, although it is still probably cooked a bit.

jamesl

schmoo wrote: »

once again, James!

I remember a year or two ago when I'd first seen your storm photos. They were great too but man you've come a long way in a short time!

Wow Schmoo, thanks! Very appreciated.

I think the biggest change in my workflow has been moving to RAW, staying in 16 bits, and bracketting everything possible. I've actually started going back and redoing old photos with new processing techniques.

Thanks again!

James

scole

If this is the first, I can't wait to see the rest. An amazing sunset & expertly captured. I have no nits about it. Well done!

jamesl

Thanks Steve! This was probably the best sunset of the entire vacation, although I had a few others that were pretty good.