This is probably my favorite photo taken during my trip to Japan. My girlfriend and I spent 10 days split between Kyoto and Tokyo. What a clean country! Such a stark contrast coming back to Los Angeles.
This is Kinkaku-ji in northern Kyoto. The weather had been cloudy with off-and-on light rain for the last day and a half and this day we were fortunate to get the sky AND the clouds. I love it when my outdoor photographs can get some texture in the sky! We don't see many clouds in L.A. It is ridiculous. The photograph is another attempt at honing in on the art of High Dynamic Range photography. It is 5 exposures all at ISO 400 with the following F-stop, Shutter speed: F13, 1/640; F18, 1/1250; F14, 1/800; F10, 1/400; and F9, 1/320. It was a bit breezy and these are all handheld, then combined in PS. Hopefully the movement in the near tree isn't too evident. Next was tone mapping with the Photomatix plugin, curves layer for contrast, brightness/contrast layer to bring back the darker areas, and minor dodging/burning to fix smaller details in the roof and tree in the water.
Hope it doesn't look too over-processed and everyone likes it as much as I do!
Statistics
Place: 95 out of 366 Avg (all users): 6.0523 Avg (commenters): 7.0000 Avg (participants): 6.0180 Avg (non-participants): 6.1429 Views since voting: 1091 Views during voting: 58 Votes: 153 Comments: 6 Favorites: 1 (view)
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
