Monk Nash

Have you added a dash of HDR to the first pic ,to me it works very well like something out of a story book.
 
Thanks Derek. No HDR per se - I took two exposures as the light was quite harsh and blown out in a few places, and just used a layer mask and brush in gimp. I applied local contrast and unsharp mask to the brickwork on the building in the hope of making it a bit punchier, maybe contributing the HDR look?
 
I see a few issues with the first one and it might be just the case of light being simply unworkable

A light cloud would have softened the light just enough to enable a more balanced exposure while still retaining the "sunny" look. You can't even really do a HDR here as everything moves and you probably don't want to blend every leaf by hand.

Getting into the detail it's hard to judge the image at this size on TP - it just looks too busy. On Flickr size it starts to make a little more sense. That also reveals the problems that give the HDR sense to this image. Right hand side has a lot of blown out small highlights everywhere that were forcefully recovered to unnatural pure mid-grey (or worse they usually carry magenta hint). Note these have zero details in them and are best left pure white. There are a few other blown bits around water, some just sRGB out-of-gamut issue and so on. All of that comes down to harsh light which is best avoided in any case.
I'm also not keen on the left side being darkened so far that it loses most details.

Actually a square crop may be better and you would just lose some of the worst affected areas at the same time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top