[surf-shot.com]

Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile 29 October 2022

We don't travel much and don't take many landscape photos. There are times a scene is interesting and inspiring but trying to capture what you see and feel is evasive. HDR seemed to answer the problem of the bright white mountains behind the black mountains, but HDR seemed to draw a lot of negative reactions. One might try to use HDR software sparingly while hoping to keep the results reigned in to what the eye saw IRL.

Because we're usually seeing the world through a telephoto lens, it's a surprise and a bit disappointing when we switch to a wide angle lens hoping to capture the entire vast, rugged scene spanning horizon to horizon only to find the steep mountains no longer look steep. Maybe the best way to describe what the wide angle sees is the tall mountains pulled down to the horizon with the foreground and sky elongated. Meanwhile, those much more knowledgeable and smarter than we are insisting telephoto compression is a myth. Hopefully we can agree the perception of telephoto compression is real. And wide angle makes noses big.

Canon EOS R3 -- RF100-500 @ 106mm -- f/6.3 -- 1/1600 to 1/4000 -- ISO 400
55 frames, bracketed 5 frames X .3 stop, to make 11 HDR images stitched
some headroom at the top of the frame for the obscured mountains tops
Thanks for looking.

 

[viper699]

EPIC as always, never been, some day I hope. This is epic

 

[StarTracker50]

Very nice!

 

[Gaduf]

Magnificent perspective of the scene, the viewer is drawn into the image.
You have certainly captured the size of the steep mountains.
Thanks for sharing.
Gavin

 

[surf-shot.com]

@viper699 , @StarTracker50 , @Gaduf Thank you and thanks for looking!

 

[MrFotoFool]

Beautiful! It's on my bucket list, but I doubt I will ever make it there.

 

[surf-shot.com]

Beautiful! It's on my bucket list, but I doubt I will ever make it there.

Thank you. It’s an amazing place but there are plenty of less difficult options.

 

[Woody Meristem]

Great photo -- ya done real good.

 

[surf-shot.com]

Great photo -- ya done real good.

Thank you!

 

[ButlerKid]

Truly a beautiful image. However, bracketing in 1/3 stops? That's a lot of extra work. I do a lot of architecture and in the past would have to bracket 5-7 exposures in 1 stop increments to capture the extremely wide range of exposures in dark interiors with bright light coming in the windows. Then use HDR to put all those files together. Today I rarely bracket at all and if I do it is with 1 stop increments.

 

[surf-shot.com]

Truly a beautiful image. However, bracketing in 1/3 stops? That's a lot of extra work. I do a lot of architecture and in the past would have to bracket 5-7 exposures in 1 stop increments to capture the extremely wide range of exposures in dark interiors with bright light coming in the windows. Then use HDR to put all those files together. Today I rarely bracket at all and if I do it is with 1 stop increments.

Thank you and thanks for your input.

 

[Lance B]

Superb shot!

 

[surf-shot.com]

Superb shot!

Thank you!

 

[Unscript]

Breathtaking!

It's a very nice layering and lighting, and those mountains are awesome.

It must have been a little of a race against those clouds.

 

[surf-shot.com]

Breathtaking!

It's a very nice layering and lighting, and those mountains are awesome.

It must have been a little of a race against those clouds.

Thank you! It had been first on our “bucket list”. The weather was very windy with rain, snow, sleet every day. We didn’t see Torres del Paine “blue towers” due to clouds at first. We’re comfortable hiking five to ten miles at home but could only walk four or five miles at a time due to the crazy weather. Locals told us the unique rock formations were made of granite, softer sedimentary rock that had eroded revealing the jagged granite and magma intrusions that transformed sedimentary rocks into metamorphic rocks.