Lake Vyrnwy Straining tower

That's a nice shot. I went there a couple of years ago looking for somewhere to take a nice photograph of my car, hoping to be able to get that tower in the background. Unfortunately no good, there's nowhere to park safely where I could get both in the picture. Is there much PP going on there? I just had a look at my similar photo and it's quite a lot duller than that one, taken at roughly this time of year but in 2012.
 
Not really much done at all mate.i was hampered by the trees growing to the left and only having a 50mm prime.
For a 11 quid 10 stop the results are acceptable I think.
 
Very much so. This is mine, with a little bit of adjustment of contrast, saturation and so on, but I can't quite put my finger on exactly what makes this look more flat and uninteresting than yours. OK, the water and sky will be different as you have a longer exposure for the ND filter, but there's something much "better" about the tower in your image that I can't quite capture.
vyrnwy2.jpg
It's quite a nice image, but as with many of my landscape images I can't quite hit on exactly what is missing. Any thoughts from anyone would be appreciated.
 
Hmm, filter use great but that is far from a good viewpoint of the tower. Get yourselves off up to the hotel or round the other side of the lake. (y)

Vyrnwy is one of my favourite places in all of Wales, I lived in Llanwddyn and looked out at the dam from my front window.
 
I did some from the other side of the lake, I'll have a dig through and see if any were decent enough to put up. My mistake was going in the afternoon and limiting myself to coming away quite early, have to try for a full day next time.
 
droopsnoot said:
I did some from the other side of the lake, I'll have a dig through and see if any were decent enough to put up. My mistake was going in the afternoon and limiting myself to coming away quite early, have to try for a full day next time.
Click to expand...

This is actually harder than it seems, as the valley is very steep sided, so really not only do you need to have the right weather but you need to be at the right time of year!!

Christmas Morning 2013!!!! Fuji X100 and some lucky light!!!!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/89667368@N05/8307238316/in/album-72157631934458505/
 
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Returning to the OPs shot, given the grey light, its not a bad shot, but perhaps could do with some gentle HDR to give the picture more impact.I've had a crack at it, but the skys gone a bit mad!!! If rob wants me to post it up then I will. Don't like editing other peoples work without their say so!!!
 
droopsnoot said:
Very much so. This is mine, with a little bit of adjustment of contrast, saturation and so on, but I can't quite put my finger on exactly what makes this look more flat and uninteresting than yours. OK, the water and sky will be different as you have a longer exposure for the ND filter, but there's something much "better" about the tower in your image that I can't quite capture.
View attachment 47933
It's quite a nice image, but as with many of my landscape images I can't quite hit on exactly what is missing. Any thoughts from anyone would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

If you've got Lightroom then you can add an ND grad to take the sky down about 1.75 stops, then play with Clarity and Vibrance sliders to check effect. You'll have to watch out for the foreground bracken getting a bit too green, but that can be cropped a bit.

Rob's shot benefits from different lighting, some autumn colour in the bracken and a tighter composition that reduces the expanse of water, plus the ND smooths his water out, so you're not going to get yours to really look like Rob's.
 
Thanks for that - it was mainly the brickwork in the tower that has something "more", though it's always possible that the tone of the brick and growth on it has changed in the last three years. I don't have Lightroom, best I have is either Paintshop Pro v5 or I've got an old PC with Photoshop 6 (not CS6, just v 6.0) on it, which is what I used for that and the ones on my thread. I suspect it might be time to buy something better.
 
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