Lauterbrunnen Valley

[LeeIs]

Lauterbrunnen Valley, Switzerland.

Ok, i'm 0/2 now for this years vacation pics! Maybe this one'll fair better than the last two. I took this down to 800px wide, it looks so small on my screen. I did a little manual HDR'ing here. The valley is so deep, that unless shot at noon, one will get some sorta harsh shadow. Your thoughts are appreciated as always.

Sorry, i'm pumping out the threads btw, those that are familiar with me might know that i get quiet for a period then i go nuts for another, i think it all balances out at the end.

[icicle]

OH my god, Love this photo, do you mind if I save a copy to my computer?

Look at those faces of the cliffs, Makes me want to climb through my monitor just to scale(climb) them cliffs
Looks perfect to me.

[Lang]

That's beautiful, well done.

[LeeIs]

icicle, i don't mind, go ahead and grab it. also, google lauterbrunnen, and the bernese oberland, they're very big on outdoor sports, climbing, hang gliding, paragliding, sky diving, u name it! Infact, i was standing in that valley for about an hour and I saw a few people land on parachutes and helicopters taking them back up. there's also a huge camping ground right there. thanks btw.


lang, thank u

[readingr]

Liban,

I love the scene here and it has a terrific sense of depth.

I personally would crop half of the foreground almost up to the edge of the house on the right.

One other thing I would consider is to clone out the shiny car by the tent which captures the eye once spotted.

Roger R.

[draymorton]

Amazing!

How did you get such an even exposure? Did you use a ND grad?

[gahspidy]

Good job in exposing for the highlights here and bringing back the shadow detail, it seems that is what was done. i like the framing and i actually prefer to leave the foreground grass as the sliver of green adds some dimension here for me.
Well done, Liban

[LeeIs]

Roger, you have such a good eye man. I would have never seen that car. thanks for pointing it out. I really despise cars in the middle of nature shots.

Ray, no, i just bracketed it in Raw +1, and -1, then layered them in photoshop and masked areas quite broadly with a giant soft brush. thank u.

Gary, thanks man.

[GB1]

Hmmmm.

It's a nice shot showing the ruggedness of the Alps and the general hilliness of the landscape. The colors are good, the shot is clear.

Art-wise, it may lean more towards a "I was here" shot rather than fine art. I think this because the bottom grass is too plain, the mountain tops seem somewhat clipped off, and the town area is indeed a tad dark in comparison to the rest of the image. I guess an HDR may have helped, if you could pull it off where it looks normal ...

Another thing is to clone out what seems to be jet trails on the top center-right of the image, but that's easy.

This looks like a nice place, at least in the summer when it isn't too cold.

G

[LeeIs]

GB, thanks for a nice and detailed critique.

Yes, me personally, I'm all about the 'I was here' shots . I love the travel side of photography and if I can entice 1 person to say "I really wanna go there" i think I've achieved my primary goal.

This looks like a nice place...

hmm, do u wanna go there ;)


Yes, the town is too dark. I actually had other frames that the town is well exposed for and when i used that portion of the photo to create a manual HDR'ish shot, it just didn't look too natural. I think the eye expects that area to be darker by analyzing the time of day etc subconsciously and It just didn't seem right when i tried to lighten it up much more.

Thanks man.

[GB1]

I've actually been to Switzerland back in '85 for about a week. Lucerne , Geneva, some other spots .. quite stunning. I have to dig out some old Kodachrome shots I have of it. I had the same issue with the shadows btw . Hard to even that out and we didn't have HDR back then.

[LeeIs]

Nice. these mountains don't change much, they pretty much remain as u saw them. I didn't have the time to hit lucerne or Geneva on this trip. i was only there for 5 days out of the two weeks to europe. I can only imagine how tough the dodging and burning woulda been for these alps back in those days.

[snoid]

Fantastic shot of a beautiful area.
PP must have been tough.

[Grandpaw]

This is an excellent photo! I like the way you have detail throughout the frame. The mountains and the sky both came out very well and that is difficult to accomplish. I do agree about getting rid of the jet trail and after you do that get a nice size print made, put it in a frame with a nice double mat and hang it in some important place in the living room. If you do not have a good location to display it, PM me, and I will send you my shipping address, Jeff

[Greg McCary]

Nice picture and the processing is great.

[LeeIs]

Snoid and Greg, thanks guys.

Jeff. lol. nice one