Mnemonic

We finally witnessed a really beautiful sunset yesterday which was something I was really looking forward to. It's things like these that really cheer me up and I needed cheering up. One of the best teachers I've ever had left our college yesterday. We were all sad to see her go and gave her a farewell. So it was not a really good day for us but then I watched the sunset on my way home and that put a smile on my face.

I thought I would shoot a timelapse of the sunset but the sun dipped behind some really low clouds on the horizon and didn't come out until it was too late. So I walked around the fields for a bit looking for some good photo opportunities. I came across the tree in today's picture. I don't know how I hadn't seen it before but it just might be my new favourite spot to take pictures. I'm just waiting for the next good sunset to get some really good pictures.

About the post-processing. I took three bracketed shot (-2,0,+2) in order to get the entire range of light. I ended up using just the normally exposed photography at the end. I used a few luminosity masks on this one. They work great!

Luminosity masks are still a new technique for me so I do require a lot of practice but they're great for digital blending. I've also created a handy GIF that shows you the various stages in the creation of this image - hope that helps. It's a rather large file so it might take a while to load. You'll find it after the picture.

And now for the GIF (let's hope this works)