This is another photo taken on my trip from Santa Cruz to San Francisco via the California coastal Highway 1 this past weekend. I captured this photo immediately after sunset, while the sky was still colored with lovely pastels and the light on the land was still very soft. There was also a light fog along the coast, creating a very nice misty effect in the distance.

This is also my first attempt at creating a HDR image. For those not familar with the technique, HDR stands for high dynamic range, and is the process of taking multiple photos of the same scene at different exposure levels and combining them to create a single image with better overall lighting and exposure than any single picture alone. Familiar with shooting photos and getting the sky perfect but the landscape (foreground) too dark, or vice versa? This is where HDR can help. You take multiple photos, one or more exposed for the sky, and one or more exposed for the landscape and combine them using HDR software to create a well-balanced image. The effect can easily be overdone, creating an unnatural or almost cartoon-like effect. I tried hard to avoid that here, please leave a comment and let me know whether you like the result or not.

You can view a larger version of the photo here.