On my second night up in Mammoth, there wasn’t much going on with the weather. Clear blue skies were everywhere except in this one direction, looking out towards the Twin Lakes. Everywhere else, there were boring blue skies, so this was my shot for the night.
In front of me were the twin lakes with mosquitos buzzing thick in the air (I somehow did not get one bite); behind me was another lake, Lake Mammie. I got a few shots there later but didn’t stay long because a black bear was hanging out about thirty feet away, making me uncomfortable.
Behind The Shot
I shot this with the Fujifilm X-Pro 2 and the 23mm f1.4 lens (35mm equiv). I had to take several exposures since the dynamic range was more than any modern camera could handle.
It took me a while to get this shoot looking right.
At first, I used Photomatix, but it kept looking too much like something out of Harry Potter since I thought it enhanced too much color in the shadows and drew too much attention to the foreground trees. So, I combined the three exposures manually in Photoshop—one for the sky, one for the foreground, and one for the lake.
I did a little bit of extra coloring and enhancements and landed here.
X-Pro 2 / 23mm f1.4 – ISO 200, f8, (1/27s, 0.6s, 1/7s)
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