This shot was a challenge as the cave was actually quite tight, it was the middle of the day (contrasty light outside) and had broken glass inside, not to mention that I got absolutely drenched walking back to my car amidst a thunder storm. Carrying a tripod was a bit un-nerving.
I used a 16-35 wide angle lens to capture the rock but had to do 2 things:-
- Shoot HDR – take multiple exposures for the huge dynamic tonal range to be covered.
- Focus stack – in order to get everything sharp.
Oh for an articulated viewing screen !
The shot was taken low down on a tripod with my head pressed against the cave wall at times – some of the exposures ran into seconds.
Anyway the next challenge was putting it all together. After trying the HDR function in Lightroom I wasn’t very happy with the results. It looked “HDRd” which was not what I wanted at all.
So I manually blended the raw files in Photoshop after processing in Lightroom. Then focus stacked to get the best sharpness. A bit of a palaver but with the cave and outside having such a huge dynamic range (Why did I photograph it in the middle of the day?) it wasn’t bad.
I’ll return there at a more sensible time and get the shot I really want.