Mountain Lion, Warbler Pond, Los Alamos NM (September 2015)

Since I managed to get shots of the mother cougar, cub, a beautiful sunrise that lit up Barranca Canyon and the sky, I decided to take advantage of High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography to make a few composite shots. HDR allows multiple exposures to be combined which is necessary to capture sunrise, the canyon, and the flash lit pond all in the same shot. As the sun rises, the clouds light up and although one can see the canyon with the naked eye, the camera isn't sensitive enough to capture the canyon. Once the canyon is bright enough, the colorful clouds of sunrise are gone. The cougars came 30 minutes before sunrise and 30 minutes after sunset requring flash to light them up at the pond. The mother cougar and cub never came at the same time. Therefore, I decided to have some fun to put all of these amazing aspects that make Warbler Pond amazing into a few shots: