Sunrise over Warwickshire

MarkDuplock

MarkDuplock

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Mark
Edit My Images
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Really pleased with these 2 from this morning. Still getting the hang of range filters, so let me know if the PP is too obvious please.

Would really appreciate any CC :)


TmIcA7M.jpg


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I think the pictures are far too dark, the sun is quite high and it would be full daylight in reality. With this contrast you’re best blending two exposures in Lightroom as an HDR, you can get really nice natural looking files doing this. As this is you can notice the edge of the graduated filter
 
I agree - too dark, especially the top one. The composition works well though.
Whereabouts were these taken from? Burton Dasset?
 
Not only very dark but very noisy too - I suspect that's too much PP

Lovely scenes though

Les :)
 
Cheers Les, yes that noise is annoying me and I can’t figure out why it’s there.
I’m going to take it back into LR and try some things.

For HDR merges, should I edit each image and then merge? I tried brightening the foreground shot slightly and then tried to merge it, but LR could fine enough detail to merge them.
 
In the second especially, given the height of the sun above the horizon, the shot is far too dark.
 
Mark, I wish no offence, but the physical position of the sun in the sky means this was quite a bit after sunrise, and even with cloud there would have been almost full daylight.
 
MarkDuplock said:
trust me, this was right at sunrise. The scene was very dark. There must be something i did with the exposure of the sky that is deceiving.
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I've been doing landscape photography seriously for 6 years and it just isn't that dark when the sun is visible in the sky. I'm guessing it's at least 30 minutes after sunrise judging by the position of the sun. There's nothing wrong with processing it darker than reality but this is too much.

I suspect the noise is there because you've tried to lift the shadow detail in processing and as the raw is underexposed there just isn't the detail to work with. If you have a bright exposure blend in Lighroom (merge as HDR and don't process first). It creates a nice raw image with huge dynamic range which you can then edit sympathetically.
 
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It's my understanding when you HDR merge (or pano stitch) Lightroom reverts to the original raws to produce a secondary raw file. Any edits prior to merging are irrelevant.
I've never been a fan of the Lightroom merge function. IMO a cleaner, more realistic result can be achieved using the middle exposure depending on which manufacturers raw file system is used. IE....some manufacturers files are more flexible than others before falling apart.
If Lightroom couldn't merge your files I suspect all shots used were hugely underexposed hence the dark results for the time of day as others have noted.
I don't mind the pictures per se but the height of the sun does pose some questions in relation to the overall exposure. For example, there does appear to be direct sunlight hitting the grassy embankments casting some shadows on the lee side. And it may just be my eye but it does perceive the light band above the horizons as a halo from possible use of the brush tool. It may be entirely possible it is caused naturally (I've seen it before) but I would address this in PP to take the perception of sloppy brush work away from the viewer.
Hope that helps.
 
I think I've sussed it. I was using 3 exposures for the merge, but I think the under exposed shot was dragging the whole thing down. So I went with the lightest 2 shots and ended up with this after PP. I can brighten up the foreground quite a bit more if needed, what do you guys think?

And also, thank you for all the fantastic feedback so far! I would never have realised my mistakes with these shots and how much better they could be with a bit more tweaking in LR.


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The last one is far better but still on the dark side, I think it just about works though. I would tone down the saturation a bit though

Edit - looking on my phone this is actually still way too dark. Time for a screen calibration
 
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The three bracketed shots (you may need more if the dynamic range you are trying to capture is very big) should cover a proper exposure on the darkest part of the image and one on the lightest and then the middle one. Merge these three images together with an HDR program. From there, you can adjust the dark and light areas to your liking, without too much noise creeping in. There are other ways to do it in lightroom and Photoshop

View: https://youtu.be/uCcbp_3q1bk
 
Nostromo said:
The three bracketed shots (you may need more if the dynamic range you are trying to capture is very big) should cover a proper exposure on the darkest part of the image and one on the lightest and then the middle one. Merge these three images together with an HDR program. From there, you can adjust the dark and light areas to your liking, without too much noise creeping in. There are other ways to do it in lightroom and Photoshop

View: https://youtu.be/uCcbp_3q1bk
Click to expand...

Cheers, I'll check out the video.

I think what I did wrong was for the bottom bracket shot, I exposed for the dark foreground and then drove it down 2 more stops. It was so dark it was driving the entire merge down. I'm away from home for the week and I don't have my shots with me or I'd show you how they looked.
 
MarkDuplock said:
Still getting the hang of range filters, so let me know if the PP is too obvious please.
Click to expand...

I'm not quite clear what you mean by this?

If you have a relatively recent camera then you may not even need to bracket & use HDR, but if you DO use multiple shots then make sure one is taken for the shadows as well as one for the highlights.
 
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