Hi everyone. I've started to take photography more seriously in the last 6 months or so (have been using a DSLR on/off for a couple of years), with the view to maybe going pro...I've a long way to go yet, but I'm getting better. I'm still trying to find a style that suits me (and is marketable!) so I'm wondering if you guys can give your opinion on this photo I took in Co. Kerry, Ireland?
ISO 200 f10 1/40 35mm
The image kind appears a bit soft to me. What could I have done better?
It's my first attempt at exposure blending in Ps and I realise that my editing needs to be a lot more refined. How is the contrast, colour sat? The clouds look a bit "dirty" and grainy; how can I fix that? I am presently learning how to use luminosity masks so I will apply what I learn from that to this photo to better blend the exposures.
Hi Mike. I'll firstly disqualify my own opinion by saying "I'm no expert". So this is just my humble opinion, feel free to disagree with me...
The clouds don't look dirty or grainy to me at all, however with the image preview being only about 1000px it's a bit hard to say. Overall the edit looks quite good to me, the only thing I wonder about edit wise is the colour/brightness of the mountain on the right, it's looking very dark and no where near the shade of green in the valley - it might have actually been like that in real life so no criticism, just wondering if it was a similar shade of green in the valley as to whether you could improve the edit. Other than that, I think your blend looks quite natural.
With the Sunshine breaking through the clouds, there appears to be some reddish/orange tones in there - I'm not sure I'm personally into it - but that's just me, it's just my own observation, you and others might love that, so no problem.
So with all of that above, my main question would just be about composition. I would have loved to see more of the Sun, ie if it were technically possible, have the crop higher or shot differently to fit more of the Sun in. It feels like there's no real foreground to this image and everything is just too far away. But I realise that this isn't what you're asking for, so sorry if that's not helping.
I do love it when I'm out hiking and see awesome sunbursts through changeable weather, It must have been an awesome moment to be there watching this. Thanks for sharing :)
Hey Craig, great feedback. The purple tone on the mountains is actually from the heather growing there but, I agree, is does look a bit weird. Yeah, the reddish/orange tones was me overdoing it with the saturation, I would prefer a more natural look to my photos in general, so that's something to work on. I actually had to crop the image (top and bottom) because there were some very dark clouds obscuring the sun. They didn't look well, especially after my dodgy editing so I just removed them. As for the foreground.....it sucked; very dark and no interesting focal point.
Here is an example of the whole scene. Did I do the right thing by cropping?
Thanks!
Ooh, I actually like that dark cloud across the top!
I wonder if you left the bottom crop where it was, but raise the top crop up higher and leave as you have here. Seeing this shot here, you've done a great job to get that detail back into the clouds.
I like some orange, but probably not the reddish hue to it? But eh I can over-cook it too sometimes. One thing I have to be weary of is picking on the colour's in someone's edit when I haven't been there myself, just because it looks different to me doesn't mean it's not natural. I had someone comment to me about a photo I put up saying they "didn't believe the colour of the water" yet the funny thing for me was that the lake was 100% correct.
I find the longer I"ve been editing and when I just want to "get something out" is when I'm in most danger of over-doing it, I know in those situations I need to just close it down, go something else then come back and look at it with fresh eyes.
But it would be good if other's weighed in on this, as I said before, the over-whelming majority might disagree with me and love the sky colours. I would hardly call my opinion finite :)
Nice one, Craig. The light was amazing that morning but, if I being honest, it wasn't as saturated as it appears in my edit. I got the clouds back by blending in an exposure with nearly 4 stops in the difference. I was following along with a youtube tutorial on exposure blending when the guy did an extreme colour adjustment and used a blend mode (forget which one) for his particular photo. I did the same to mine and thought "Hobbit country" when I saw the result, so I left it. I still need to train my eye more for colour adjusting as I wouldn't really have picked up on the reddish tone. I'll do a re-edit with your advice and opinion in mind and see how I get on. Also, your dead right, I need to work on my compositions. I should have "worked the scene" more, guess.
Oh, and yes, watching sunburst is incredible but in this instance I was being eaten alive by midge flies.....probably the most annoying insects on the planet. I stuck it out though and paid the price by getting bites all over my hands and face :)
Thanks again for the great feedback, I really appreciate it!