Software such as PTGui can take the rich, beautiful blue from the darker shots and the detail in the tree trunk from the brighter shots and create a single image that is exposed correctly throughout like the image to the left. Notice the blue sky that is correctly exposed and the detail in the shadowed areas at the base of the tree and the forest floor.

John Steinbeck, the Nobel Prize winning American author, wrote in Travels with Charlie, when he and his dog Charlie were traveling through the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park, that "No one has ever successfully painted or photographed the Giant Sequoia Trees." And that was because of the huge dynamic range between the sky and the deeply shadowed forest floor. Now, with digital processing and the automated features of digital SLR cameras, it has become possible to capture the high dynamic range of the Giant Sequoia forest for the first time!

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