The Sierra Nevada Mountains run along the eastern edge of central California. The eastern side of the mountains faces Nevada. Rains generally come from the west and make the mountains a bit greener on that side, but rivers also from to the east, ultimately disappearing in the high desert lands of Nevada. It gives the eastern Sierras a character interesting to photographers.

Markleeville is the seat of Alpine County, a geographically large area having only about 1500 residents. The residents get to enjoy some of that eastern Sierra scenery. Markleeville is a small town (pop. 197) about 50 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe. Route 89 continues south of the town, ultimately turning east through Monitor Pass.

Roughly six miles south of town, the road crosses over the Carson River, providing an accessible photogenic view. The 4 PM late September sun provided contrasty lighting, just the thing for my recently recovered interest in high dynamic range imagery (HDRI). I took three frames, bracketed 1 1/2 stops around the nominal exposure:

The nominal exposure is fairly good, but the brightly lit rocks and grass have had the color burned out by overexposure. HDRI combines the three exposures to extend the dynamic range. I used Photomatix to obtain

The image has the sought-after dynamic range, but it is soft and the foreground is especially lackluster. I sharpened the whole image using conventional unsharp masking, but the foreground was still muddy. After some fooling around with histograms, I went for the nuclear option. In contrast enhancement, the nuclear option is Topaz Labs Detail filter for Photoshop, with Strong Internal Detail selected. This was applied just to the foreground, selected with the lasso tool and feathered.

See what I mean? I think that similar result could have been achieved withing the confines of Photoshop, possibly by adjusting a posterized version of the foreground and overlaying it back on the image. But what is the point of having a nuclear option if your are not going to use it?

The image strikes me as having a certain quality like a painting. I tried pushing that idea using the artistic filter options in Photoshop, but failed to make an interesting improvement. Perhaps some theoretical upper limit of photodiddling had been reached.

The eastern Sierras are an inspiration to photographers. Unless you are a back country adventurer it’s best to travel between Many and November, when the mountain passes are open. Set you sights on Markleeville.