How to make this more interesting

steveo_mcg

steveo_mcg

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Steven
Edit My Images
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I'm not sure if i'm being overly critical but I think these are a bit dull, not just the light. I was up that way with the bairn and the camera and had to make use of the light that was, I have a couple of "shots" in my head but I need to wait for a nice evening to try it.

how would you improve this photo? There are a few more on flickr if this one is beyond hope :D.


DSC_0660 by steveo_mcg, on Flickr
 
Cheers Mark, I'll try that when I get home.

What about compositionally?
Is there any thing that jumps out that say you would've been better standing over there?
 
The big gravestone (downie?) is cut off on the bottom,and also blends in with the church too much. I would have moved left or right to get it out of the way (if possible, I dont know what the view is either side).
Also it looks quite low down, but not low enough for the emphasis mentioned above, I might have tried to gain some height to the shot, or got properly low.

30 seconds in Lightroom helps it out a bit.
If you shot in RAW, you should recover most of the sky detail without introudcing too much noise.


SteveoMcg by TCR4x4, on Flickr
 
Thanks Tom, that does look much better. I spent a while in Lightroom with the original but still need to practice more. Mind telling me what you did?

I should be able to get a little more left and down a bit more, i was already kneeling for that one. There isn't really any where to get higher short of climbing a tree but the trees are so close and i'm so rubbish and climbing I don't think its worth the risk :D.
 
All I did was add a little contrast +49, whack the highlights right down-100 (Im using LR4) and boost the clarity up to about +80. I also added a grad to the sky with -2.78 exposure and +8 contrast. I then boosted the overal exposure to +0.12

Maybe just standing up would do it, i cant put my finger on it, but I just feel like Im squatting down when viewing it, if that makes sense?
 
Cool let me try that.

This one is taken from roughly the same position a meter or so back over the perimeter wall, so has to be from standing.

DSC_0658 by steveo_mcg, on Flickr
 
TCR4x4 said:
All I did was add a little contrast +49, whack the highlights right down-100 (Im using LR4) and boost the clarity up to about +80. I also added a grad to the sky with -2.78 exposure and +8 contrast. I then boosted the overal exposure to +0.12

Maybe just standing up would do it, i cant put my finger on it, but I just feel like Im squatting down when viewing it, if that makes sense?
Click to expand...

Lightroom 4 is good. I like the highlight and shadow recovery feature.
 
I did this in Cs5 also use a grad on the sky then using a topaz filter ..colour popped it and increased the detail sort of hdr effect ;) but as has been said sky gets a whack of noise :gag: maybe overcooked it a bit but you get the idea:cool:

6973126779_ae86c052b0.jpg
 
Cheers guys, going to do some more reading on pp, never thought about some digital trickery to do grad filtering.
 
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