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The woman in this image is Robyn Keith. Robyn is a carpenter and I wanted to capture her at work with the rising sun behind her. The light was really rich the morning I shot this and the sparks flying from her cutting wheel also caught me eye. I also liked the way the morning sunlight was reflecting off the surface of the concrete form that she was working on and tying the sparks, the sunlit sky and the reflections together.

This HDR image was created in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 from my standard bracket set of +2, o and -2 EV. Because she was moving slightly while cutting off the rebar, I had to apply 80% anti-ghosting to eliminate some ghosting around her head. When applying anti-ghosting I always strive to use the smallest percentage possible to avoid creating other artifacts in the image. In this case 80% was the lowest amount I could use; anything less than that amount left ghosts of her head and hands. I could have dealt with that issue inside Photoshop but the anti-ghosting settings in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 usually are a much simpler approach and work very well in most cases.After merging the three frames I applied the Balanced preset to do my basic tone-mapping. I like to use that preset because it adds a small amount of contrast to the initial merger and sets the stage for me to adjust the shadows and highlights without adding too much of an over-processed HDR feel to the merged files. As usual I returned the merged files to Aperture 3 where I completed adjusting it and sharpened it.