Yellowstone Adventure Week

In the blink of an eye, the warm temps give was to zero degrees and the magic appears. We woke to hoar frost covering the Madison River corridor, steam from the geyser sucking up the sunrise, with the silence of the moment only interrupted by the sounds of our motordrives, it was one of those special mornings.

The range of light because of the depth of the corridor required light compression techniques. Some used exposure comp, others split grads, I went with my multi image bracket set to make these top two  images. I’ve always wanted to get a star burst through a tree with deep shadows shot. This was my first attempt using my technique. Not too bad, there is room for improvement though. That fact you can’t see the star burst with this smaller image is the first thing I need to fix.

This last image didn’t really need to be captured using this process, the range of light was just a tad beyond five stops. I wanted though more detail in what was available, capture that glow from the hoar frost crystals.. After processing, the image was run through Nikn Color Efex Pro Dark/lighten Circle to finish.

Photos captured by D3, 14-24AFS / 45PC-E on Lexar UDMA digital film