I was lucky enough to encounter The Dog with her Lady again while out on a HDR shoot at River Park North in Greenville, North Carolina. These two really get around and I seem to be crossing their path quite frequently.

Processing: This particular day was perfect for bracketing with bright sun and very deep shadows. It was a challenge for Nik HDR Efex Pro 2. I started with nine images but couldn’t get the tonal blend that I was looking for without ugly artifacts. I dropped to five with the same negative results. By using three exposures at 1.5 ev intervals, I was able to get a workable HDR image. My main tone mapping effort was to use Control Points to get a more realistic visual blend in the shadow areas while maintaining the middle tones and highlights. Adobe Photoshop worked great for final sharpening using High Pass filter and color correction with Hue/Saturation.

Since my most recent image of these two was done in a warm duotone, I thought I’d do this shot with the same technique.

Equipment used: Nikon D700  20-35mm f/3.5-4.5 lens, 20mm, f/8, ISO 400.