April 13: Early Morning on Verano Drive by Robin Reid

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13-APR-2005	Robin Reid

April 13: Early Morning on Verano Drive

Rancho Bernardo, CA

This image was a tough one to capture. As shown it is about what my eye saw, however the camera couldn’t handle the range of the exposure. The solution was using my RAW setting. I loaded the image twice, once with levels set to get the early morning sky (which wiped out the darker foreground, and then a second time with levels set to bring up the foreground (which knocked out the sky).

I put that second copy on top of the first which created two layers in Photoshop. I then used magic wand and eraser to delete the sky on the top layer and then merged them together.

The other part of this image that interests me is how truly quiet my street most days. Here at 6:39 a.m. there is no traffic and only one lone runner. I thought about cloning out the trash can, but decided to show what my eye saw.

Canon EOS 20D ,Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
1/125s f/7.1 at 18.0mm iso100 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto

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snootydog		16-Apr-2005 00:17
Robin, what is spectacular about this photo is that I can absolutely feel the early morning stillness. Oddly I feel as though I can here the rhythmic steps of the jogger. Nice PS work to to combine exposures.

brother_mark		15-Apr-2005 02:16
Pretty and quiet. I'd like to try a shot in my neighborhood at this hour, but I just can't get up that early!

Guest		14-Apr-2005 16:45
Excellent work!!

Kenneth Zimmerman		14-Apr-2005 12:39
Nice work onthe PhotoShop stuff, is this not a GREAT program! I like the trash can in the image, it makes it look real, they do exist and it makes this shot look real. The runner adds life to this otherwise static image. Well done.

Gayle P. Clement		14-Apr-2005 03:52
Really a beauty, Robin. I love the rich light.

Herb		14-Apr-2005 03:21
Nice work Robin

Karen Leaf		14-Apr-2005 02:11
Good photo to experiment with that technique. It's a good one technique, but the pic needs to be a real keeper for me to mess with the different layers, and layer adjustmens etc etc-a lot of time involved but well worth the effort when absolutely necessary.

Guest		14-Apr-2005 01:26
Wow, this is an excellent composition, Robin!

Guest		14-Apr-2005 01:08
Hey Robin you have done such a great job with PS!! Thank you for sharing.

laine82		14-Apr-2005 00:45
You live on neat street, Robin.

Cliff		13-Apr-2005 23:13
Lovely sky and appreciate your technique. Another I've read and sort of tried is to usethe levels for one part of the image and save it - then levels again for the second part - save - then use the history brush to undo the part that is too dark or too light. Something like that anyhow :o)

Gail Davison		13-Apr-2005 20:04
Excellent PS work. A nice shot.

Gary Winters		13-Apr-2005 19:31
Good PS work, Robin. And thanks for posting your workflow. Helpful indeed!

Di		13-Apr-2005 18:35
Thank you so much for your explanations. Being so new to this, I didn't realize that you could even do that! I love these kinds of pictures, when I can see what the artist was seeing at the time and not a created scene. I think the trash can adds character.

Guest		13-Apr-2005 17:00
beautiful..excellent comp..I can't convert my raw image..grrrr

Guest		13-Apr-2005 16:40
That's a great technique, I'm not sure why I didn't think of it before since I adjust every single picture I take in RAW. I had thought you could only do this by taking two pictures, but that method works only for very still landscapes where nothing at all changes between the two shots, and even then, it's a pain to adjust exposures between shots. I like your method. Also, you have one lazy neighbor apparently who didn't put their trash bins away yesterday. That's usually me on my block.