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Exploring Torres del Paine National Park in southern Chile and not catching sunrise over the Cuernos del Paine is like visiting Agra in India and not going to see the Taj Mahal. Even though there are hundreds of thousands of images of these peaks, you still can’t help but want to bring home a keeper. Much like the rest of my time in Patagonia, I was fortunate to get pretty amazing weather while shooting this location. While some intense storm clouds wouldn’t of hurt this scene, I was very happy with the end result. I used two stacked soft GND filters to help balance the contrast of light between the sun lit mountains and emerald green Lago Pehoe while also using a 6 stop ND B+W filter to help slow down my shutter speed to give the lake a glass like feel. What are your thoughts on the final results?
Camera Info:
CAMERA: Canon 1D Mark IV
LENS: Canon 24-70 2.8L at 38mm
FILTERS: .9 Hitech soft GND Filter + .6 LEE soft GND filter + 6 stop B+W ND filter
ISO: 250
EXPOSURE: 6.0 sec at f / 11
Post Processing:
Because I utilized my set of Lee filters while taking the shot, I was not forced to manually blend two photos together to create this image. In Adobe Lightroom I slightly darkened the mountains while pulling out some sharpness utilizing the brush tool (localized adjustments). I then pulled some of the green color of Lago Pehoe back out as well as brought some shadow detail out of the mountains using the same technique. I wrapped up the image using Adobe Photoshop to do some selective sharpening on the rock in the foreground and clean out a few dust spots.
