HDR

This cornice/drift formation was visibile in the last photo as well. The compound curves highlighted by the evening light caught my eye.

So what is HDR anyway? It stands for High Dynamic Range. In a practical sense, it is when the brightest and darkest portions of a picture are captured with multiple exposures and compressed into a single exposure so that the details can be seen. Make sense?

Here is another way to think about it. When you take a picture of a sunset, you normally get a very dark foreground and a very bright sunset, sometimes it is so bright that it loses its details and that is when we say, "You just had to be there."

In this case HDR is simply the process of taking an exposure for the sky, and an exposure for the foreground and blending them digitally to get a result such as the one above and the two photos below.

The shot above happens to be my favorite of the trip.

Looking out over the mainland.

Another view of the sunset and alpenglow. Beautiful colors, I couldn't have asked for a better sunset. The entire horizon was glowing. In the middle of this frame the three sisters of Etolin Island visible.