A door to Middle Earth

This door on Waiheke Island looked very interesting. I am keen to

know whether with such images I should make the sky a deeper blue.

This photo was taken using a polarising filter but the sky still looks

so light in colour. However that is what we often get in New Zealand

and probably reasonably represents the sky at the time.

I would consider either using a gradation filter or software like HDRPhotostudio to darken the highlights, in this case the sky. Photoshop CS4 or Lightroom2 will have facilities for darkening skies in imitation of gradation filters. Have you checked out that route?

The wall capture is perfect in terms of tone and detail.

Regarding your sky, you can create a "simili-polarizer/ND grad filter" effect in PS quite easily. Just open a level adjustment layer, do not change anything to the histogram, then accept it and change the layer blending mode to Multiply. The whole image will darken. Then making sure you select the layer mask apply a gradient filter from the bottom to about the middle of the picture, you can also apply some on the sides to keep the trees from becoming too dark, then you can paint with a black brush on the filter in areas that you dont want to be darken but cannot be effectively covered by the gradient tool (like the leaves of the tree near the skyline) if the effect is still not strong enough just copy the adjustment layer and then adjust the opacity to taste (see my 2 mins and less than perfect attempt. If you play with it for a bit i'm sure you can do better than me). Regards - michel

Another possibility Jim, is if you shot this in RAW, you could develop two "negatives" one properly exposed for the sky and one properly exposed for the fence and then combine and blend them in photoshop. Regards - michel

Many thanks John & Michel. I will work through your suggestions as much as I can with Photoshop Elements 6 to see what I can come up with.

 

Michel, I do not have RAW operating yet. Intend to take start taking photos with RAW soon as my SLR has that facility. Just having a bit of a problem downloading the right plug -in for PE6. Apparently I should download a 32bit version - even though my PC has 64bit !

 

Very engaging stone and woodwork.