Blending Techniques

Barksdale's Brigade, originally uploaded by Cocoabiscuit.

This photo, an infrared HDR shot of the Mississippi Monument in Gettysburg National Historic Battlefield Park blends a variety of techniques. First, it was shot with an infrared converted Nikon D70 so that they only light hitting the sensor is in the infrared spectrum. That gives the white grass and leaves and the enhanced darkness of the monument stone. The cottony quality of the sky reflects early morning with a combination of low sun and the fog not totally lifted.
The second technique is HDR with 3 shots taken: one overexposed to bring out the features in the statue and the house that was in the shade, one normally exposed, and one underexposed to bring out the texture in the sky. I used a tripod to keep all of the images aligned. combined the images in Photomatix, and did more work in Photoshop for the final effect. They were shot at f/16 with shutter speeds of 1/40, 1/80, and 1/160 respectively at an ISO of 400.