beverley minster, england Baptistery, W end of S side aisle, Beverley Minster

Resubmitted after some digital "tidying up". Thanks for looking.

good light

Hallo Rick, much better , congratulations, a fine piece of art , saludos // Salvador

... the soft reflections of the window on the stone are a nice touch. The shot is extremely well done. Do you prefer the CS3 HDR to the Photomatix? Do you always use so many exposures to build your final image? I'm wondering what the difference is between three and six. I've done some experiments after looking at your stuff, not sure that I'm gaining anything personally, but it also may be that I work in locales with far less light than you are. Congratulations.

...because of cluttered bg. But the dappled light reminded me of some of your magical shots and I couldn't resist. Now, I have to confess, I cloned out 3 chairs, 3 tables, 2 bookcases, 1 steel pole and an 8ft extension ladder which were scattered about as preparations for a concert were underway -imagine the accoustics!

...On the HDR software, I have never used Photomatix, I think I associated it with the "HDR look" and went for CS3. Of course, Photomatix can give natural pics, witness your and Theo's work, but once you get used to one piece of software it is a chore to change.

...As to the number of exposures, I normally estimate the exposure TTL (before shifting!) and then start at +2 and keep taking shots in -1 steps until the highlights are not clipped. I have wondered about the number of exposures you need for HDR merge, but my uncontrolled experiments have not been conclusive. I think exposures in -2 steps seem to work just as well, but I have noticed that I can get better results with 4 or 5 rather than just 3. I rarely use the +2 exposure, that often gives a worse result in CS3. Having said that, it really depends on the dynamic range of the shot -sometimes a single exposure works just fine. Cheers! RickDB

 

... now that's what the critique forum is all about in the first place.

 

As to the cloning, as you know I try to do none or as little as possible (in fact my shot of Saint Remi in black and white has a ladder far down on the left side of the aisle :). Part of that is an artistic decision, but I'm afraid that decision is also predicated on the fact that I've never been skilled at retouching, despite working in Photoshop since 2.0. I see the stuff that you and Ton Mestron do and am mind-boggled. Photis eliminated a poster on one of my shots. I spent an hour-and-a-half trying to do the same work on the original shot and gave up in complete frustration.

 

Thanks for the information on your exposures, pretty much what I am doing, except that I sometimes do special exposures for windows or a unique light source. And despite all of this, I'd say about 2/3rds of my finished shots are one-exposure only.