Machu Picchu Dawn [HDR Composite]
July, 2005
(click in the image for a larger version)
This is an HDR (high dynamic range) image of the sunrise at Machu Picchu, Peru, created from six tripod-mounted RAW exposures taken 1-stop apart. The aperture was consistent at f/8 and the shutter speeds ranged from 1/3200th of a second to 1/100th of a second.
(click in the image of the 6 exposures to see a larger version)
The six exposures were then used with the Merge to HDR feature in Photoshop CS2 to create a 32-bit image that used the best parts of each exposure.
The single exposure that I got after using Merge to HDR was not really what I was after with this image (possibly because the exposure range was so extreme from shooting directly into the rising sun). To arrive at the final image seen here, I made two separate HDR composites from the six original exposures, and then composited those two images together using layer masks and adjustment layers.













