Shooting sunset; foreground way too dark

[TMR Design]

I was out shooting some sunsets this afternoon and even when I was shooting I could see that no matter what I tried I was getting great shots of the sun and the clouds but there were trees in the foreground that were always too dark and never showed up as green. They appear to be almost black.
What is the trick or where to I begin to make adjustments to get a better balance between a dark foreground and the sun in the background?

[cool_dude07]

Ahhhh, an intriguing question. To answer quite honestly, this is not possible in one shot. You need to take atleast 2 exposures to produce what is called an HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo to get everything exposed properly. I like the sillouette of the trees personally, as shown here...

102299

So..I'd suggest making them all black, or trying to produce an HDR image...not in between, I personally don't think they look as good when the trees are kind of half exposed.

Ty

P.S. Played with Saturation, Contrast and darkened trees.

[Pixel9ine]

What is the trick or where to I begin to make adjustments to get a better balance between a dark foreground and the sun in the background?There's no "magic trick" to it-- unless you use a graduated ND filter (which darkens the sky enough to expose well with the foreground), or a simpler (read: cheaper) solution being to bracket your shots by 2/3 or 1 stop and create an HDR in PS as suggested above.

[RossW]

Not trying to be too picky here, but if you combine images so the darkest areas (trees) are lightened while keeping the lighter sky as is... wouldn't that be reducing the dynamic range of the image? You're bringing everything back more toward a middle luminosity, after all.

(Note that I totally agree that it's a valid technique to get the image the original poster is looking for.)

[TMR Design]

Thank you for the response. I am going to play with this a bit more.

[JohnBee]

Recently I decided to try a little experimenting with these types of situations. Several years ago I read in a magazine how a photographer took multiple shots of a location and superimposed the lighting to create a balanced image. So I figured I would try my own hack to try and overcome underexposed foregrounds under direct lighting. Having the camera on a tripod I framed my shot then locked all positions.

I carefully positions my hand in front of the light source and fired a shot.
Then I repeated the shot without the hand covering the light source.

When I returned home I took both shots and composited an image using photoshop.
The results were very promising and so I will be trying this again, only this time I will use a mat black board to cover up the light source.

The thing that gets to me about direct sunlight and sunset portraits is our eyes can see through the light and maintain visibility in a scene, because we can focus on things other than the light source. The camera however is not that advanced and so it distorts the final result. But if we can work around the underexposing somehow then we could achieve very natural looking results under the circumstances. Which imo. would really enhance those awesome sunset shots.

[Jon]

Not trying to be too picky here, but if you combine images so the darkest areas (trees) are lightened while keeping the lighter sky as is... wouldn't that be reducing the dynamic range of the image? You're bringing everything back more toward a middle luminosity, after all.

(Note that I totally agree that it's a valid technique to get the image the original poster is looking for.)HDR refers to the range of the original scene, not of the resultant photo.

[johnthebaptist]

Ahhhh, an intriguing question. To answer quite honestly, this is not possible in one shot. You need to take atleast 2 exposures to produce what is called an HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo to get everything exposed properly. I like the sillouette of the trees personally, as shown here...

102299

So..I'd suggest making them all black, or trying to produce an HDR image...not in between, I personally don't think they look as good when the trees are kind of half exposed.

Ty

P.S. Played with Saturation, Contrast and darkened trees.

I agree . . . lovely shot!

[cool_dude07]

I agree . . . lovely shot!
Thank You!

[RossW]

HDR refers to the range of the original scene, not of the resultant photo.

Ahhh... thank you.