Mirror Lake, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I got the boys occupied in throwing snow balls and trying to crush through the skim ice on Mirror Lake. Then I hunkered down to the ground and fired off a series of ten wide angle, high depth of field exposures. These were shot at 12mm (18mm in 35mm terms) and f/22, with shutter speeds ranging from 1/6 of a second to 1/125 of a second. In other words, a twenty times range to capture the full range of lights and darks in the scene I was seeing.

Back home, I used Photomatix to blend together the ten versions, adjusted using the Photomatix tone controls, and then hand corrected with another five layers in Photoshop. Here’s a more detailed explanation of my process.

For some more of my photos of this much-admired spot (in the late 1800s, Mirror Lake was a required subject for artists visiting Yosemite), check out Mirror Lake and Mirror Lake in Winter and Spring.