Extended Contrast

This photo was taken for my Digital Imaging class.  I watched the weather all day long just waiting for all the icky gray clouds to let up so that I could get an interesting looking photo.  When the clouds did finally break right before sunset, I drove around Highway 13 and turned down some strange gravel roads.  This is the shot I ended up with.  What I did was I put my camera up on my tripod and took two photos of the scene.  I exposed one for the sky and then another that I exposed land.  Then I took it into photoshop and put both of the two into layers and then used a layer mask and painted in the photo that was exposed for the land into the one that was exposed for the sky.  The main issue that I had was when I started to get into the tree lines.  If I went too close to the sky then a halo started to show around the tree line.  In the end I just had to use a paintbrush with a lower flow and opacity and get in real close.  So here is what I ended up with….