P#3: Pointing At The Sun At Mono Lake, California

Finally capturing the photo of Mono Lake you've been longing for

This image is the one where I'm pointing into the sun and to me this was still the most amazing picture I've ever taken because I'm pointing directly into the sun.

I have detail in the sun and detail in every single thing in front of me -- and the warm light hitting the Tufa Towers over on the left there.

I've photographed in Mono Lake for over 30 years and whenever you point into the sun, you just had black silhouettes for the Tufa Towers. You never saw any details at all. Everything was solid black.

But if you look in this image closely, even the hillsides next to the sun, you can see the different ridges and there's detail in all those hillsides.
(click the image for a larger version)

So this was put together in Photoshop, and in Photoshop you get the histogram that shows how many stops of information there are in the scene. And there are 21 stops of information within this scene, which is just mind boggling to me.

Audri Lanford: And how many pictures did you have to combine using HDR?

Lewis Kemper: There were nine here, nine images that I photographed. And after 30 years, I finally got a picture of what I saw when I stood in this place and I'd never been able to do that before. So that was just so very exciting for me.

To conclude

This photograph of the Tufa Towers at Mono Lake was made possible with a combination of HDR software and the genius of the photographer.