Last light

Everyone knows that I'm landscape handicapped. I liked this shot for the way that it showed the sky and light on the water. It was almost dark and I was scrambling to get a few shots. The cars actually had their headlights on.
20D - tamron 24 - 135. I would have to go back and find the RAW to know the settings.
Should I have done anything differently. I know that their are a hundred different ways to look at the same shot.
I hesitate to put this on since I never seem to get my landscapes right. I should stick to my fish and horses.

Ron Morse said:

Should I have done anything differently. I know that their are a hundred different ways to look at the same shot.

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Hi Ron,

After a quick bit of HDR Tonemapping, I understand how the scene caught your attention:

I added your Copyright notice to my edited version, hope you don't mind.

The image lacks a bit of composition (Horizon too central), but there may not have been a lot of maneuvering space, so one has to take what's available. Next time you might want to try to either give the cloudy sky or the foreground some more space. If you could get closer/lower to the foreground rocks, try a shorter focal length, put emphasis on the rocks, and because of the shorter FL you'll automatically get more of the sky patterns if they are interesting.

Just a thought,
Bart

Great improvement.

The defining of the rocks provides an anchor to the bottom of the picture and then a basis for judging distance! Maybe a tad too much sharpening, but now the picture works.

Asher

That is fantastic Bart. I love it.
Do you use some kind of software for the HDR Tonemapping?
I must remember to get down low when taking these shots.

Ron Morse said:

Do you use some kind of software for the HDR Tonemapping?

Click to expand...

Since I'm currently postprocessing a series of stitched HDR church interiors, I also used the Photomatix HDR tonemapping plug-in for this tonemapping.

Something similar (but not as fast) could have been done with the Photoshop CS2 built-in HDR functionality. Just convert the image mode to 16-bits/channel and then to 32-b/ch. Then change back again to 16-b/ch, which brings up the HDR conversion dialog, choose the Local Adaptation method, and experiment with the curve shape.

Bart