This week my brother is in town, so we took a short trip up to the town of Nikko together. Located in Tochigi Prefecture, Nikko is a fairly famous place in Japan. It has a lot of history behind it, with many old temples, although my brother and I went primarily for the purpose of enjoying the beautiful nature. The area around Nikko is filled with great hiking spots and breathtaking scenery, including some magnificent waterfalls. Kegon Falls, the one in the photo below, is probably the most famous of all the falls in the area. Unfortunately we weren’t able to go to the lower observation deck, which is accessible only by elevator and was closed by sunset. The upper deck still provided a nice view though, and perhaps a better view with the sunset added in.
I tried something a little different than normal in this photo. Usually I like to get lots of color in the sky, and as a rule of thumb you don’t want to have things blown out in a photo. But after taking an iPhone shot that ended up that way I realized I felt like it worked in this image, so I worked with it as best as I could. While I did use multiple images and exposures here, this actually is not an HDR image. I manually edited the lighting using a variety of tools, particularly luminosity masks. I think the resulting image is a bit more magical than a properly exposed sky would allow for. What about you?
Camera: Nikon D7000
Lens: Tokina 11-16mm
Shot Info: f/11 | multiple exposures | ISO100 | 11mm
Click Here To Purchase A Print
