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Smith Rock near Bend, Oregon is a rock-climbing hot spot, and it’s also one of our favorite places to visit while we are in the area. While we were on our road trip to Washington last year, an unexpected snow storm caused us to abandon our plans for Mt Adams. A quick search while driving down got us a hotel room in Bend for a couple of days. We knew what our first destination would be and headed Straight for it well before sunrise.
The challenge with Smith Rock is the distance between interesting viewpoints. None of them are close together, and the view changes quite dramatically from one spot to the other. During my first visit here, we had a fantastic sunrise, but we didn’t have a place nailed down, so ended up taking a tremendous sunrise shot of the parking lot. I didn’t want that to happen during this visit and did some research on the best possible spot for sunrise and added sufficient time to walk there very slowly. The morning was fantastic, with stunning colors and dramatic cloud formations.
I’d have gone with the HDR route in the past but thankfully learned a bit about exposure blending and tried with this image. I loved how much more realistic the outcome is, and I am glad I invested the time in learning about it. I usually am very reluctant to learn more about photoshop, but I think every landscape photographer should spend some time exploring the possibilities of exposure blending.