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Thank you.

nice contrast....photoshop?

The editing is a little obvious around the tree, especially when viewed small. Nice apart from this though. 6/5

Gorgeous HDR!!

Congratulations!

I love it! Congrats.

The HDR processing is too noticeable. Especially in the too dramatic sky and the halo surrounding the tree.

Why on earth was this photo chosen for the editors pics! Ok please dont take personally but i dont understand judges sometimes! Obviously you are messing about with photoshop / hdr etc for this one but thats it playing around, which is fine but not a shot one would post and expect to be highly regarded. My only constructive criticism is to bin this shot and take the same composition but true life photography on a day with interesting weather and i will return to give you feedback. Sorry if that sounded harsh but this is not photography. :o)

Michael Moore's comment is ridiculous. Saying this isn't photography just shows ignorance. What's with the HDR police, searching out photos that might hint of hdr and blowing the whistle? Of course this is photography, "painting with light," what hdr does very well.

 

Theo Jacobs is also off base. Though halos are considered an hdr fault, in this case, the halo around the tree is, I think, acceptable. Landscape painters often provided halos around objects for specific "lighting effects."

 

Is Gregory Crewdson taking photographs when he sets up a multi-day set with dozens of assistants? I have no problem broadening the definition of photography. Does Mr. Moore think we should all just stick to pinhole cameras?

 

 

This is a beautiful photograph. Enjoy it!

 

 

HDR has it's tell-tale quirks, but so does everything else. Films that exaggerate color or contrast, lenses that distort, etc. Double exposures with film are an acceptable photographic technique, so why so much grief over HDR.

 

Nice Image Ales, and congrats on the selection!

I'm not sure what all the hoopla is about concerning hdr enhancement because I sense that 99 percent of the photographs in here are enhanced, and most by Photoshop. I think the image is well composed, and the colors are beautiful. You CAN tell there's enhancement, but, to me, it only adds to the painting.

Good job!

HDR is a funny beast. All of my favourite photographs are photographs that you can look at again and again and each time they do they get better and better. I have never looked at a HDR image that allows me to do this. Sure, the first time you look at a HDR image if it is done well you will be blown away, but the closer you look the more disillusioned you become with the image. As mentioned in my above comment I gave this image 6/5 the first time I saw it but the more I look at it the more fake and less real it looks. That annoys me because I know there are enough beautiful things in this world to photograph without having to create your own.

 

As Michael says almost all of the images on this website are enhanced by photoshop, however I refer him to the definition of an edited image of that used to be on this website (it has since changed). An image is un-manipulated if it can be shown in court and the photographer can say without fear of contradiction that it is a true representation of the scene before the camera when the photograph was taken. When I edit photographs, I edit them to be more like the scene I saw before my camera in real life and make only minor tweaks. HDR photographs are not reminiscent of the scene in front of the camera so to say that standard editing is somehow on the same level as HDR is in my eyes incorrect.

 

Rant over.

It looks a bit oversaturated and oversharpened, and I am surprised by the light(s) as well. But I shall look for such an area of landscape intensely the next weeks!

I do like the colors and the scene, yet I do agree that it's overdone. You can tell it's been enhanced to the tenth degree. Being rather new to photoshop elements and working in a digital darkroom, I've often wondered how photographers attained that etheral look, almost like a painting. Some acheive this well, some don't. I agree, however, that a little bit goes a long way. But as I stated earlier, most of what you see here is big-timed enhanced.

I agree with critiques. It might be a good image, but the more I look at it the more I find the lighting... implausible. The tree looks lit from the right bottom side, but the light "enhancement" is visible also on the sky and the light blue mountain amidst the branches. My guess is that the tree was way too underexposed to get any detail out of it without overcontrasting it. The dark top of the tree only looks unretouched, rather than unlit. Also, the center area of the field right below the horizon has a clear darkened blob. Retouching to me is effective only when it's invisible. Or when it's overdone in a creative way, but that's another story.

 

Alright, I can understand the temptation of adding dramatic effects by increasing contrast on the field and tree and pumping up curves for the clouds layer, but at least use masks from channels or more precise brush tips. Sorry, it just looks too fake and flat to me.

I totally agree with the above poster Michael about the lack of reality in this image ... HDR looks like Manga cartoons, this is not photography .... this is photo-shop-ography. If this is what modern photography has come to then I'm out - sorry. How the editors pick this stuff is beyond me but it does a disservice in my view. If it has been picked to incite discussion then they succeeded here only.

 

Simon.