The Story behind the Picture - Week 3

This photo is entitled "Timeless Napali" and was taken last August when my girlfriend Tess and I hiked the famous Napali coast on Kauai.

We hiked 11 miles on the Kalalau trail on the day this photo was taken. This is the most beautiful trail I have ever been on, and I recommend everyone does it at least once in their life, it's truly an amazing experience.
This is an image of Kalalau beach, at the end of the trail, with the sun setting behind the towering pali cliffs. Off to the right of this photo we camped underneath the cliffs in a huge cavern that we had all to ourselves. Once the sun set, we had an awesome view of the night sky above, blanketed with stars.

The photo itself is an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image and was assembled from three different exposures of the same image, -2, 0, and +2. By using a program called Photomatix Pro, I combined these three exposures into one and adjusted the tonal range until it looked as close as possible to what my eyes saw when I took the photo. This can be alot of fun to play around with, because the original photo was overexposed in the sky, and underexposed on the cliffs, they were almost completely black. It can be challenging to find the right middle ground on high contrast images like this one, however once achieved it brings a great sense of satisfaction.

This photo is available for purchase on my website.