Guadalupe Canyon, Mexico - Image 1

Guadalupe Canyon, Mexico. An HDR of a recent trip to a private park located on a hilltop about 40 miles south of the border, this place has hot springs and other neat stuff to do and photograph. Not sure if this image's composition needs a little tightening up, and if so on what side.

http://www.gregbulla.com/Photography...apped_1100.jpg

I''ve never been a huge fan of HDR, but this is very well done. Good job!

There's just one thing...I see a bit of a halo on the top of the mountain, left side of the image. Without that I think it's a great photo.

Thanks FJG. Yes, I also saw those halos.. Sometimes the program I use, Photomatix, does that when creating the HDRs. I need to try CS5's HDR capability and see what it produces.

Gb

GB, I'm only a fan of HDR when it doesn't look like HDR, and this thing is screaming HDR at the top of its lungs. Its an interesting composition and detail, but the color cast and tone variance look excessively artificial, even competing with each other a lot. Also, I think thats probably as tight a composition as you can go, the way the composition sort of completes itself at each corner.

Do you have a less extreme HDR?

Greg,
the center of the image, - distant valley looks really interesting

the orange color of the hill , is it anywhere like it was for real ?
I think it is an effect of the HDR, in photomatix you can reduce the saturation of the highlights, and increase the saturation of the shadows

The halos are produced when the strength is too much , reduce it a bit

Play with the level of white and black, the shadowed area have washed out colors , and little contrast

Lately I have given up HDR, of te last few attempts, I do not like the result odf the HDR and usually I can get better results from one of the bracketed images and jut recover the shadows, LR4 beta is giving me great results , when the dynamic range is way too much I have done fusion also in photomatix, instead of tone mapping and it looked better ( at least to me)

any more images of this place? looks interesting!

beyond the technicals, composition looks very busy

Charlie, Armando, I think one has to look at this one as a creative, artsy shot, definitely not a realistic one. I think there's two types of HDRs: normal shots that need just a little HDR to fix up excessively dark shadows and/or blown out skies, and then the others which try to make something artsy. I guess I'm 'trying' here :)

I tried a few other HDRs - including fusions- and none of the others were really worth keeping. Just ran it through again and used the B&W pre-select: Ok, I think, but it loses that nice warm color.

Armando, it was definitely orange at sunrise, just not as extreme. I have other shots that I will also post ... just so busy with other stuff lately :D ps - don't give completely up on HDR. It still has its uses!

G

PS - the composition still disappoints me a bit .. it's like I'm drawing all the attention to the rock pile, which doesn't quite make a great subject.

The textures become too washed out in the BW, ruins all the greens.

For me its not just about realism, but specifically when you see light that you know should appear in a way that it does not. You can see the sunlight bouncing on the glowing side of the mountain, but the sky and foreground contradict that view. You are taking something real and turning it against our better judgment. If you want to break the convention of realism, you can't only go halfway there, go all the way.

I would take off some rocks off the bottom to perhaps make it look a little more like a pano. Also, try to work on brightening the sky a little in relation to the rocks - the rocks seem to be getting way too much "sun" compared to how dark the sky is. Photomatix may let you mess with highlights and shadows smoothing - and also, try changing the white and black level ...that helps a little in that regard. Either way, I think it has good potential and I like the scenery.

Thks LLewpics, will try that Pano idea !!

There is too much foreground

Going with Anbesol's post, the darkened sky just clashes too hard with the obviously sunlit hillside and well-lit foreground.

I, too, feel that once halos appear in HDR, it's been taken too far.