Wednesday Landscapes, 4 October 2017

You are invited to upload one or more of your landscape photos and, if you’d like, to accompany your image with some commentary: challenges you faced in making the image? your intent for the image? settings? post-processing decisions? why you did what you did? the place and time? or an aspect you’d like feedback on? And please feel free to ask questions of others who have posted images or to join the discussion. If you don’t feel like using words, that’s OK too—unaccompanied images (or unaccompanied words, for that matter) are also very much welcomed. As for the technicalities, the usual forum guidelines apply: files < 1 MB; image size <1000 px maximum dimension.

There’s a fair bit of post-processing on this one, mostly to make up for my lapse of judgement in the field. I was working to capture a graceful shape to the wave, and I wasn’t paying enough attention to what was going on farther upslope on the beach; the frame with the best wave image was the one in which I’d inadvertently cropped off the tip of the point of wet sand on the left. The next wave—10 seconds later—wasn’t well-formed, but I got the full point of the wet sand, which by then had changed shape as the water drained. So I had two frames I wanted to merge, but the images were different enough in exposure (aperture priority, with different amounts of bright wave), wave shape, and shape of the wet sand that the automatic panorama merge turned up its nose in disgust. I ended up merging them by hand, with a lot of help from the clone tool to cover up the evidence. (1/80 and 1/160 s, f/9, ISO 200, at 113 mm on a crop-sensor camera; I opened shadows, increased white point, reduced highlights, increased contrast and clarity, and balanced exposures on the individual frames; and on the combined image I increased vibrance, warmed the white balance slightly, and used hue and saturation sliders to bring out the warm tones a bit more). [and as a last step, when I uploaded the image I decided I didn't like the panorama-like aspect ratio, so I popped it back into photoshop, stretched it vertically a bit, and re-posted the image]

 

Sunrise at College Cove

Edited October 4, 2017 by Leslie Reid

First HDR image processed with the Macphun Aurora HDR software for Windows. Just got it and though there are some things I like better in photomatix, it appears to be much easier to get natural looking images with Aurora.

Mono Lake, California.

 

When tracking deer and birds, I always keep an eye on the sky. Saturday, this popped into view and I stopped for 30-minutes to work it with my ultra-wide 14mm and my 100-400mm zoom. This is at 140mm with the zoom:

 

God-rays Over DTC by David Stephens, on Flickr

First HDR image processed with the Macphun Aurora HDR software for Windows. Just got it and though there are some things I like better in photomatix, it appears to be much easier to get natural looking images with Aurora.

QUOTE]

 

I like that realistic interpretation. If you hadn't said HDR, I wouldn't have suspected it.

You are invited to upload one or more of your landscape photos and, if you’d like, to accompany your image with some commentary: challenges you faced in making the image? your intent for the image? settings? post-processing decisions? why you did what you did? the place and time? or an aspect you’d like feedback on? And please feel free to ask questions of others who have posted images or to join the discussion. If you don’t feel like using words, that’s OK too—unaccompanied images (or unaccompanied words, for that matter) are also very much welcomed. As for the technicalities, the usual forum guidelines apply: files < 1 MB; image size <1000 px maximum dimension.

There’s a fair bit of post-processing on this one, mostly to make up for my lapse of judgement in the field. I was working to capture a graceful shape to the wave, and I wasn’t paying enough attention to what was going on farther upslope on the beach; the frame with the best wave image was the one in which I’d inadvertently cropped off the tip of the point of wet sand on the left. The next wave—10 seconds later—wasn’t well-formed, but I got the full point of the wet sand, which by then had changed shape as the water drained. So I had two frames I wanted to merge, but the images were different enough in exposure (aperture priority, with different amounts of bright wave), wave shape, and shape of the wet sand that the automatic panorama merge turned up its nose in disgust. I ended up merging them by hand, with a lot of help from the clone tool to cover up the evidence. (1/80 and 1/160 s, f/9, ISO 200, at 113 mm on a crop-sensor camera; I opened shadows, increased white point, reduced highlights, increased contrast and clarity, and balanced exposures on the individual frames; and on the combined image I increased vibrance, warmed the white balance slightly, and used hue and saturation sliders to bring out the warm tones a bit more). [and as a last step, when I uploaded the image I decided I didn't like the panorama-like aspect ratio, so I popped it back into photoshop, stretched it vertically a bit, and re-posted the image]

 

[ATTACH=full]1212554[/ATTACH]

Sunrise at College Cove

 

Leslie, to me, the image looks like it's been solarized. Am I off base on this?

I shot this photograph at Red Rock Canyon in Nevada some time ago, using my first DSLR - a Canon T1i and a kit zoom lens (18-55) at 55mm. The settings were 1/200, f9.9, ISO 100.

Dieter, was that a composite or a single RAW image you processed?

Congratulations, it's a classic.

I took this one last month in a remote out port in Newfoundland with a D800E and my trusty old 28-70mm horse.

 

 

This took two upload attempts. The first one sent me a message the file was too large for the server to support. The second time it just uploaded anyway.

natural looking images

It's beautiful, Dieter; I also wouldn't have guessed it was HDR. What range of exposures were you using? (consider this an invitation to post the frames you HDR'd, if you'd like to). Did you use a polarizer?

the image looks like it's been solarized

I used to solarize in the darkroom but I didn’t know about the digital version, so I just googled it—in the immortal words of Calvin and Hobbes, “I’d say our afternoon just got booked solid.” And I can see why you might think it was solarized.

 

But for this image, nope—it was just really strange light, which was what caught my attention. The sun hadn’t hit the beach (or me) yet, so all the light here is reflected from the sky. Here’s my guess about what was going on: I’m looking east, and the dark reflections on the uniform water film over the saturated sand (and on level parts of the ocean) are of the forested bluff above the beach to the east. In contrast, the bright reflections are from the surfaces of wet sand-grains and from ripples on the waves. These are reflections of the sky, and it’s the brightest part of each of these that dominates (same idea as trying to avoid the specular reflection from a curved windshield—you can’t, because it moves as you move). The bright reflections closest to me reflect the gold-toned sunrise sky closest to the eastern horizon, while the brightest parts of the more distant reflections are blue because the bluff is close enough there to block the view of the golden sky near the horizon. The dark patches of drier sand show what the actual light level on the beach was without the reflections.

This took two upload attempts. The first one sent me a message the file was too large for the server to support. The second time it just uploaded anyway.

I had the same problem earlier today on a different thread; the image uploaded after my fifth try (I'd progressively downsized the image, then finally went back to the original and it loaded). It turns out there were two of us posting to the same thread at the same time, but I don't know if that had anything to do with it. Let's hope it's a momentary glitch.

in the immortal words of Calvin and Hobbes

 

Aha! Another philosophy major?

(for a "natural" view, put your nose about 3mm from the screen :rolleyes:)

The problem uploading photos has been reported. Several of us have been getting the "file too large" message. I've had it about half a dozen times already today. It's a bogus message, so don't think it's anything you're doing and don't fuss with your files. Glenn said in the thread where it was reported that it likely has something to do with the spam filters they're fiddling around with. It's just another case of one step ahead and two steps backwards at ol' PN. Gordon and I have both had luck either just backing up our browser and refreshing the page or quitting the browser and relaunching it. We can usually post after we've done that. And now I ask each and every one of you to join me in a chorus of . . .

 

What range of exposures were you using?

was that a composite or a single RAW image you processed?

Three RAW images with a rather untypical (for HDR) range of exposures of -2, -1, 0 EV. Just trying to make sure I have at least one image where the clouds aren't blown out.

Did you use a polarizer?

No polarizer - learned my lesson that in most cases when used with an ultra-wide angle lens, they don't work properly and lead to a weird darkening pattern across the sky,

Dieter, I downloaded the trial version when it came out the other day. Still making up my mind...

I did this one before digital came along. Shot with 4x5 on Ektachrome with an ancient 90mm Zeiss Protar uncoated lens! With the tilt capability of the 4x5 camera I could get the foreground as sharp as the background across the lake. Scanned on an Epson 2450 flat bed scanner. BTW this lens went down to f 90! and was very good around f22-32.

Lake Geneva

left Montreax, Switzerland on a fast train to Paris, standing at the door in between cars it was hot, leaning over the stairs, trying to stay above the stickers on the door's window on a very rough section of track while dripping sweat on a large 6 pound lens and trying not to bang against the window!

was glad to get this one acceptable picture.

 

_170805_123156_EUR7941 by BG Day, on Flickr

Dieter, did you by any chance compare the result with a non-HDR approach by simply boosting the shadows of the -2 shot? If you have a Nikon D8XX, then I would anticipate the HDR treatment may not have been necessary at all. 2 stops should be easy to compensate without HDR. I would do it without considering HDR with the Canon 5DIV. Edited October 10, 2017 by Robin Smith