Finally a Sunset and a little "HDR light"

I finally got the timing right on one of my drives home from Canada.  There are a few nice farm houses on top of a mountain that looks over to a rest area.  I was hoping to get there for a sunset, and finally, the timing worked out for me.  As you can see from before, I tend to like the sunsets anyway, so any chance at one really makes me happy.  However before the sunset, lets look at the farm house (I will get to why).

Remember to click the picture to get a full size.

I have always liked old farm houses, and enjoy taking pictures of them.  Notice here the sky is white (as I exposed for the farmhouse.  Now lets look at the sky on its own.

So, now HDR (High Dynamic Range) is getting really popular in photography.  HDR is basically accomplished by taking multiple exposures and combining them so that all the pixels are exposed properly.  I do not do much with this, but I have often put the sky back into the picture (which I guess is sort of like HDR light).  So, I will now combing the exposures (note the sunset is zoomed out a bit more, but that will not matter).  

Had I not zoomed out for the sky, the dark clouds would not have been there (they were higher in the picture).  I could still have easily removed them by just sliding the picture up.  However, I tend to like the look that they give, so I figured I would leave them like this.  

This is a pretty cool image.  All I had to do was put the farm house on a layer over the sunset, use the magic wand and select the sky and delete it.  Then a nice picture with an exposed farm house and sky (in very simple steps.  Notice, I used this technique with the church photo down further in this blog (but tried multiple skies) as well as others.