Having done some work on the Lake Matheson at Fox Glacier photo (see older post here) , I have finally retrieved the type of shot I was hoping for.
The photo was taken in the late evening when there was a lot of shadow cast in the extreme right of the shot – so the trees were in total shadow. I created 3 exposures from the RAW file, one +1.65Ev, One original version with a bit of contrast and a final one with some extra saturation and some shadows -1Ev. These were then compiled into a HDR so that I could get the detail in the shadowed area while still retaining the detail in the mountains and the lake.
The final result is shown below.
Lake Matheson Panorama taken 10 mins from Fox Glacier, New Zealand on April 28th 2011