A couple of weeks ago the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupted, releasing a large ash cloud into the sky. It was reported on the news that the cloud would be passing over the Netherlands, creating an intense red glow during sunset. So, together with a friend of mine, we set out to capture the glow 
This was also a good chance to try out some HDRs, as it’s hard to capture the entire sky in one image, without blowing out parts of the image.
I waited for Photoshop CS5 to come out before creating the HDRs (hence the delay in posting these), as the tools for combining images into an HDR were significantly improved over the ones in CS4. You can now import you images directly from Lightroom (I’m using version 3 beta 2) into Photoshop CS5 with the “Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop” option, very convenient!
This image combined from five exposures shows how much dynamic range can be obtained from shooting multiple exposures. The single images were either blown out (i.e. completely white) in the sky, or were exposed properly for the sky, but were underexposed for the grass. On a side note: I like how CS5 produces natural looking HDRs, not over-processed as many HDRs tend to look.
This photo was shot in a single exposure, and as you can see, the bottom third contains no information (i.e. it’s completely black).
Here you see the same electricity masts, but shot and processed to an HDR. The foreground still contains detail (although I darkened it a bit to get a more natural looking image), in contrast to the previous one, where it was all black.. Which version you prefer is personal preference 
Now time for some sunset All of the photos below where shot at multiple exposures and merged to HDR using Photoshop CS5.
And finally, a shot taken from the roof of the building where I live. I really like the red glow illuminating the bottom of the clouds.
I might do a video tutorial on how to shoot and process photos to HDR images, but that’s something for another post.. Until next time!