This is one the last images taken as we left this wonderful park. Glad that we ended up adding this to our trip out west (this was a quick add to the trip that was not originally planned).

Spent the day there, and took this as we were leaving heading back to our hotel near Mono Lake. Wanted to get back to Mono Lake after sunset for some LE there. One of those taken there at dusk is shown below in the comments.

Tags:   Yosemite National Park California

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When we had a day visiting the east side of Yosemite National Park, I really liked this rock and the comp there with the lake. I knew this bright rock in the full sun would be a challenge, and was a great choice for using a graduated ND filter to darken the bottom half of the screen.

Instead of taking that route for the image, I exposed with the camera metering off the bright rock and set that the exposure would be 1 stop over exposed. Took the shot and saw that the histogram showed no blowout.

I have posted two versions of the image here, the first with the basic processing settings I use with the RAW file to JPEG conversion. Then with the gradient tool I applied two gradients that reduced the "highlights by 90%) for the bottom half of the frame, and then applied the "brush" tool to the rock dropping the exposure on the rock face by 1/3 stop. This removed the bright glare and really brought out the details in the rock that was there within the RAW capture. This all took about 1 minute to do with the LR-4 program.

Thought this would be helpful for my contacts out there that may be on the fence with shooting in RAW and using a program like LR-4 that allows for quick adjustment tools like the gradient and brush tools.

Tags:   Yosemite National Park California

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Three image stitch of 10mm shots taken there at the lake in the eastern end of the National Park.

Tags:   Yosemite National Park

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