Cacti

[GB1]

Taken in Tucson Arizona this morning. Just passing through, I just slept in my SUV in the park (probably not legal) about 300 yds from where I shot these. The lighting was not vivid - so I tried a few HDRs and tone-mapped them with the trial version of Photomatix, which imprints their name on the images

I don't do many HDRs but these came out very colorful. Impression?

G

[daq7]

Second one is better. The first is good except for the neon cactus in the foreground. Easy to tone it down,

[Frog]

I like the natural look of your hdr work.
I like the composition of the first one and the sun lite better and can't decide if that foreground glowing one is a problem or not. It does look as it probably did with the early sun catching it but it does seem to dominate.
Perhaps toning it down a bit as daq said.
Welcome to hdr. I think the price of photomatix is worth it.

[Canyon Hiker]

Great shot. I really like how the sun is lighting everything up. And great job on not overexposing the area around the sun.

Darin

[shootme]

Excellent, I go for the first one, better composition in my humble opinion. The HDR work is excellent not overdone as I do to many of mine. I'd be interested to know you ISO, speed and f stop for these. Cheers

[Dubbs5050]

I like the shot very much, good job hiding the glare of the sun behind the cactus....are the "photomatix" stamps unavoidable? because they are kind of annoying.

[GB1]

Thanks fellows. Frog you convinced me, I went ahead and purchased Photomatix which is leaps and bounds better than PS' HDR capability, at least on CS2. So I was able to create one w/o the stamps. Here it is, maybe a tad darker.

Do you really feel that the bottom cactus overly glows? That's pretty much how they look with low sun on them - very nice, but it's an incredible challenge to capture this with camera. It just doesn't look the same.

Shootme, the ISO was 100 and f stop @ 9. The shutter values varied of course due to the HDR (I used 5 shots), but they were around 1/160. No filters.

[shootme]

Thanks GB1.

[mdvaden]

My first impression is that I like the top one the best. May be due to the glowing spines in the bottom of the image. And its very interesting. A lot to look at, but not distracting.

[Shebang]

Number 1 for me. I didn't even notice the neon cactus at first look. I like it as it is -- with that bright sun (which you did a fine job of managing) legitimizes (is that a word??) the glowing cactus. Can you barely bump up the "neon" in the green foliage in the stream of sunlight leading to the glowing cactus? That will either totally ruin it or really work! The colors are beautiful!

[GB1]

Thanks Paula (and MD). I just got back from my little desert excursion w/ plenty more photos to edit and post (I think I would have to take another week off just to process them).

I'm new to the world of HDR but it appears that that in some bad lighting situations its the only thing one can do. When you're shooting into the sun, have bland mid-day lighting or, like what happened yesterday in east Tucson, have to deal with completely clouded over skies, its HDR or nothing.

G

[Lava Lamp]

The Photomatix version is an improvement over the original, IMHO. I certainly get the feeling of early morning, stepping out of my RV. I found a polarizing filter and a "Moose" filter (which combines a polarizer and a warming filter) very useful when I was shooting AZ. Do you ever use one?