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Big Sky
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Anyone noticing the dramatic skys we are getting lately – there is a lot of drama going on up there ;-)
I wouldn’t nomally compose a shot with so much sky or without any foreground interest but think somehow the sky stands on it own merits (he said unconvinced..) – What do you think?
Hi Fiacre,
I would prefer to see some more foreground.Although the sky is very dramatic and i love this effect, I think it suffers a little because of the lack of foreground.
Just my opinion though.STU
Very dramatic indeed.
I don’t have much of a problem with the composition here… the only fault I can find is that extremely bright spot in the sky… I think it’s blown and it’s very distracting.
Is this HDR?
Hi STU, I also would have liked something in the foreground but its a wide open space & the tide was out so wasn’t much on offer.. It works great as a desktop background on my PC though :-)
Hi Dick, That blown sun spot is annoying alright – must touch that up.. & yes its HDR (5 images blended)
Thanks,
FiacreHi Fiacre,
Try opening each RAW file in Photoshop – running the ‘recovery’ slider to 100% – then saving each exposure as a TIFF – rather than just tone-blending unprocesed RAW files.
You could go a step further if that didn’t work – and use the ‘adjustment brush’ in the RAW editor and alter the exposure and brightness over just that area..perhaps only only on the +1 & +2 exposures.
Then run the tone blending again and it will help reduce the overblown ‘sun spot’
ciao
bren
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brencullen/Hi Bren, 2 great suggestions – thanks. Unfortunately the recovery slider doesn’t rescue it & I am using DPP camera raw so don’t think I can work on a specific area :(
(That reminds me, I must invest in Lightroom methinks..)
Anyway, as a quick & dirty solution, I closed the clouds in around the blown out sun spot by cloning in the surrounding area. Hope its not cheating too much.. :wink:Hi Fiacre.
The cloning really improves it. I wonder how it would look in B&W? Well doneThanks Miki. Here is a B&W conversion (green filter). Not sure which I prefer.. The B&W adds character & drama but I also like the subtle colours that make the 1st one interesting. Or I could be just babbling now :roll:
Hi Fiacre,
I think this works better in black and white, but to be honest, the sky is just way over-processed in both for my tastes. Of course it’s a totally subjective thing, and only my opinion. If it were my image, I’d go with a square crop, putting the smokestacks closer to the left of the frame, and tone the sky down to a more realistic saturation/contrast.
A great tip I got at the weekend at Peter Cox’s post-processing seminar was to start with the saturation or vibrance slider all the way to the left (completely desaturating the image) and, without looking at the slider, move it to the right until the image looks good. This avoids fixation on a particular amount of saturation slider, which I certainly tend to do!
-Doug
Thanks Doug,
Believe it or not I am with the ‘less is more’ camp when it comes to post processing.. Quite often I use HDR as a processing tool but try to be subtle with it so the result is still ‘realistic’ & not too ‘cartoony’ (although that has its place too). The difficulty with an image like this is how close the tones are, so I used a hdr process to give it punch. For me the sky was more important than the position of the towers but you are right, there are multiple crop options in there.
Now you have me thinking alternative processing & crops :wink:
Completly valid commentary & good tips – thanks :!:I prefer the B & W version, the colour is too ott for me, maybe reduce the
blue in it a tad might make it a bit more realistic, the composition doesnt
worry me I quite like the hint of land.Critique is a good learning process to go through.. but I swear I never want to see this photo again.. :lol:
OK, here goes a final colour version taking on board all critique to date on the saturation.
Oh & if you don’t think its an improvment then please keep it to yourself as I have to move on… :wink:
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