Today was the first day of our week long photo course. It was very technical for both taking shots and processing them – I am now shooting in manual mode and in RAW (which I have been playing about with all week) so has been a learning day for me 🙂

We tried HDR but it wasn’t very successful – had more success using ‘shadows and highlights’ to bring out the detail in the very dark areas, and using ‘layers and layer masks’ – both of which I used for this image.

We were shooting into the sun through the trees so lots of shadows and bright spots. I decided it was much more interesting with a person in the image ……….. hence [url=http://www.blipfoto.com/hpx]hpx[/url] concentrating on her image in her “professional photographer” pose ……….. maybe not flattering but could be worse!!