Skomer Island Bluebells, Red Campion and White Campion - Tonemapped.

theMusicMan

theMusicMan

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John
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Hi All

Had an awesome day on the wonderful world that is Skomer Island last Thursday, and the weather was in a world of its own too - raining all the way from Newport heading West, then brightened up as soon as we set foot on the Dale Princess as she headed towards Skomer.

Anyway, thought I'd have a go at some bracketed shots of the wonderfully colourful landscape prevalent on Skomer, particularly at this time of year as there are vast areas full of Bluebells, Red Campion and White Campion.

OK, these may not be to everyone's tastes, and I am still very much experimenting with tonemapping and the pseudo HDR effect, but wanted some feedback from folk here please. Ta.

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Enjoy (or not!), and all feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks.
 
stan the man said:
great shots john...love the bluebells in the 1st shot,and the sky in the 3rd shot in particular :clap:

mmmmm...i'll have to pack my 17-70 as well as my 70-200 :naughty:
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Oh yeah Stan, take your wide lens too. I missed out being able to take the wonderful Oly 7-14mm by a week. I had lent this lens from a good friend and had it sent back only a week before we went to Skomer. I took the ones here with the Oly 11-22mm.

There's a PDF guide to what can be seen on Skomer during which parts of the year, have you seen that Stan...? Very useful.

skipper said:
fantastic shots, like em all.
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Thanks cap'n :)
 
Great set - I think number one is my favourite.
I know the processing might not be to everyone's taste but I think that these have been done brilliantly - any tips that you want to pass on regarding the processing would be appreciated (y)

Ian
 
Chillimonster said:
1 & 3 for me John

1 for the foregound and 3 for the sky (y)
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Thanks Chris, glad you like them.
blacksheep said:
Great set - I think number one is my favourite.
I know the processing might not be to everyone's taste but I think that these have been done brilliantly - any tips that you want to pass on regarding the processing would be appreciated (y)

Ian
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Thanks Ian, as for being asked for tips... wow - that's a first for me, thanks...:)

All I did really was to take a series of 5 bracketed shots, at a specified ISO and mode (I have a 'MyMode' set up on my camera to do this at the push & hold of a button), then imported them all into Lightroom2, and used the LR2 Photomatix plug-in to merge them into a single tonemapped image.

This image then gets re-imported into Lightroom adjacent to the 5 shots initially selected for the tone-map.

The settings in Photomatix were not really aggressive, I have learned (from one of the masters of HDR too!) that setting the sliders in Photomatix all the way to the max often doesn't yield the best results. So I simply experimented with the following settings:

strength
luminocity
micro-contrast
micro-smoothing
white point
black point

... until I liked what I was looking at, then pressed process and the image was reimported back into LR2.

I then probably (can't remember really Ian sorry) used a little + Clarity in LR2, and maybe looked for a little + recovery, then still within LR2 exported directly to my Zenfolio Gallery.

Hope that helps.

J
 
theMusicMan said:
Thanks Chris, glad you like them.

Thanks Ian, as for being asked for tips... wow - that's a first for me, thanks...:)

All I did really was to take a series of 5 bracketed shots, at a specified ISO and mode (I have a 'MyMode' set up on my camera to do this at the push & hold of a button), then imported them all into Lightroom2, and used the LR2 Photomatix plug-in to merge them into a single tonemapped image.

This image then gets re-imported into Lightroom adjacent to the 5 shots initially selected for the tone-map.

The settings in Photomatix were not really aggressive, I have learned (from one of the masters of HDR too!) that setting the sliders in Photomatix all the way to the max often doesn't yield the best results. So I simply experimented with the following settings:

strength
luminocity
micro-contrast
micro-smoothing
white point
black point

... until I liked what I was looking at, then pressed process and the image was reimported back into LR2.

I then probably (can't remember really Ian sorry) used a little + Clarity in LR2, and maybe looked for a little + recovery, then still within LR2 exported directly to my Zenfolio Gallery.

Hope that helps.

J
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Thanks for taking the time to reply and to go through your processing work flow, really appreciated - I've been trying a similar approach with 3 bracketed shots but not getting result anywhere near as good as this!

Thanks again for the tips and I guess I need a lot more practice with Photomatix :)
 
I like those a lot, MM :clap:.

I think that you've ranked them in my personal order of preference too, so thanks for that :D!

Sadly, the monitor that I'm viewing at the moment (at work) isn't very well calibrated, so I can't make a valid judgement about the level of processing (although I do like "vivid" on these kinds of scene :)).

Nice work, chap (y)!
 
nice shots, photo's far too overdone for me though imo
 
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I like No 3 but the first two are too overdone for my tastes - just cranking the saturation down a bit would work wonders for them.... in my book, of course. :D
 
Basically i like the images, but I'm not fond of the processing. But i understand that many people enjoy this kind of work.
 
jerry12953 said:
Personally, I think the colours are way too vivid.

You were lucky with the weather though.
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We were certainly fortunate with the weather, it was a super day.

... and with tonemapped images, that's most certainly the intent. I absolutely meant for them to be vivid, so I guess for me, you endorse what I have done. Thanks.:D
 
#1 I think, then #3
love the details in the foreground in #1 :clap:
 
Great shots of a really nice scene. I would be tempted to add a bit of depth and contrast to the foreground of the first.

Nicely done
 
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