Here is another image from the Big Springs in the Great Trinity Forest, photographed Saturday at our NANPA North Texas Meetup.
Images like this are tough because the sky is bright and the foreground is dark. It can be really hard to get a single exposure that captures that entire range of tonal values (in other words, shoot for the dark foreground and you blow out they sky).
With digital, it is relatively easy to shoot a range of exposures and then combine them together. But for this shot, I reverted to an “old-school” split neutral density filter which darkened just the sky and let me get this capture with just one exposure. I may go back later and improve it a touch, but it does not look bad like this.
As for the “God-Rays” in the sky – those are natural, no filter required.
Sunset on wildflower field, Big Springs historical and natural area, Great Trinity Forest, Dallas, Texas, USA. Canon 1DX. 16mm. ISO 200. 1.60 sec. @ f/13. EV -1.
