Green light! Go!

[Beltaine]

Got this one at the Super Chevy show, I'm happy with it except for the sky. It looks gray and almost like there's a storm coming, but it was a sunny day and the sky was blue. I was using a UV and polarizer filters. Should I have done without one or both? I made sure to turn the polarizer until the sky had some color in it on every shot, but it was still gray.

Any ideas?

[dbutler]

I've never used both together, but it's my understanding that both do the same thing in as far as deepening the colors (at least is seems so with mine), so can't help you there, but can suggest how to fix:

If you have PS (I use CS2, but I'm sure other software packages should have a similar tool), switch to "color replacement". Then open another pic with the color sky you want. Sample from the other pic, then pain over this sky. You will have the detail plus the right color.

Just a suggestion.

[jbaldocchi]

One thought I had was crop out the sky. I doesn't add much to the image. If you want to punch up the sky you could mask it in PS and use the curve mode to bring up more detail and contrast.

Cheers,

Jim B.

[SmartWombat]

I noticed that as I scrolled down, crop out the sky ot a landscape format iamge and it looks better. Crop just above the christmas tree.

There isn't enough action in the photo for me though.
Only one green light, it's a solo run.
No crowd, no tyre smoke, no competitor to the left.
It's all rather flat too.
Is this a RWYB ?

[cyberlord]

A crop anywhere from above the bleachers to right above the lights works depending on how much focus on the car or the track as a whole you want.

You could have waited a second for some action as SW pointed out as that would have added so much to the shot.

Tim

[Beltaine]

I kept as much on the crop as I did because I thought the lightpoles looked interesting. Now that I think back about that, it's a silly reason and one that has nothing really to do with the subject. Which is a bye run in a bracket race. Which is boring to begin with. Guess it would have done me well to pay attention to what was going on. Details! Argh. :mad2:

I'm still learning though, patience and practice.

Speaking of cropping. Should I crop with printing in mind, or just crop to what makes the best frame? Looking back at my other pictures from that day I have some that I could crop in tighter, but instead chose to crop at a 3:2 ratio for printing. Even though in all likelihood I won't be printing any of them.

[cyberlord]

It's up to you really on how to crop.

My personal prefrence is to try to keep a natural aspect ratio. I try to keep my camera's aspect ratio as much as possible, but there are no hard rules that I know of.

What ever looks good.

Tim