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Todays shot is of the wonderful pinnacle tufas of Trona Pinnacles at sunset. This photo was taken just when we reached the location as the light on the hills was just perfect. I originally didn’t plan on a sunset shoot that day and was hoping to just scout for a suitable milky way photo spot. But once I saw the light that was happening in front of us, I forgot all restraint and ran out with my camera and tripod for a nice sunset shot. What I liked about this composition was that the tufa pinnacles were in the shadows while the hills in the background were lit perfectly by the setting sun giving the whole scenes a nice depth.
When I started photography, I had lots of trouble correctly exposing images with dark shadows and bright sunlight. I used to rely heavily on my ND grad filters to balance the light and it was not unusual for me to take images with all three of my ND grad filters in use. This was a habit from my film days when recovering clipped dark tones was not an easy task. But as I spend more time with DSLR cameras, I learned that they are far more forgiving on recovering dark parts than recovering clipped highlights. So now when I meter a scene, I make sure that I am exposing for the brightest part of the image and then use the live histogram along with the exposure compensation dial to avoid any clipping. I would also like to add that the D800 I had earlier didn’t accurately show histograms but the D850 has a perfectly accurate histogram.
So this image which would have otherwise required at least a 3 stop nd grad filter is made without any filters by just exposing for the strengths of the modern digital sensor.