Eagle's Nest Laramie Foothills Grandeur

Another image from my anniversary celebration trip with my wife to Eagle's Nest Open Space near where we live. The Laramie Foothills beckon in the back, while the foreground is punctuated by healthy stands of mountain mahogany interspersed with rabbitbrush and prairie grasses.

Some processing notes: this is actually a ten frame hdr image. Earlier when it was breezey in this location any ten frame hdrs I tried are just riddled with ghost images of grass blowing, etc. The Sky Dragon shot I posted earlier was taken in the breezey conditions, but three frames was about the max I could go. I know ten frames is probably a bit OCD hah, but I really like the incredible dynamic and tonal range only possible when many frames are used to construct the HDR. It really looked a lot like this when I was standing there. Another advantage of ten frames here is that the clouds get a sense of movement almost like a long time exposure. The resulting 32 bit HDR image was tone-mapped in Photomatix (make sure you are using the newest version, it seems much improved) and then saved as a 16 bit tiff. The 32 bit hdr image was also tone-mapped in Photoshop and then blended with the Photomatix tone-mapped one to create this image.

LandscapeColoradoLarimerNatureLivermore MountainLivermoreEagle's NestNorth Fork of the PoudreValleyLaramie FoothillsLarimer County Open SpaceHDRTTHDR2007grasslandgrasslandsprairieMichael Menefee