North Georgia Hayfield RE-worked

[Greg McCary]

I reworked this some. Is the second better?

[jar_e]

Greg,

I think this shot has potential but a few things I'd recommend. The compositions is strong, so I wouldn't mess around anything with that. Firstly, I'm not sure if it's the compression, the way you cropped it, or what, but the pixels are quite visible (especially the sky). Along with the sky, the colors really wash out near the horizon line. It might be able to be fixed with photoshop or something but I'm not too sure.

Also...not too huge on the border. The grey color of the border doesn't help the shot at all and it's rather on the small side. But as I said in another thread, the whole border thing is a personal preference.

Good shot.

[jdugger]

I like the composition as well, although I think the colors would be richer ether earlier in the day or later in the evening depending on the angle of the sun. As far as polarizers Lee and Hi-Tec are rated really good, however they can be pricey. I have used Tiffen and they aren't bad. Polarizers work best at right angles (or perpendicular) to the light source. Again for rich colors the best time of day is within two hours after sunrise and 2 hours before sunset. during mid day the sun is so strong that it simply washes the colors out, and a polarizer can only do so much.

Good luck

[Greg McCary]

I rework ths some. A rescan and some PS work. Does it look better?

[Seb]

I reworked this some. Is the second better?

What Jared and jdugger said.

A way to potentially increase colors and saturation at the same time is to create a duplicate layer of your base layer and to set it to "overlay". Then, you can adjust the opacity of the duplicate layer to control the strenght of the effect.
It works well in various situations but it can't replace good lighting on the field.

regards

Seb

[Greg McCary]

Thanks Seb, I will try this too. I have been having trouble getting color in my skys. When am taking the picture the skys always seem to be more rich than the final result on print. I don't know if it's me, the film, the filter, the camera or the lab. But I will keep plugging away...

[jdugger]

Greg,

Skys are always problematic. Usually because to correctly expose the main subject matter "blows out the sky" This happens because the sensor or your film does not have the stop range (light to dark range) needed to correctly expose the light range in some pictures. to correct for this you can shoot two shots one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the main subject and then using the process Seb discribed of layering the shots and masking out the parts in each picture that is not correctly exposed.

The only way to fix this onsite at the shoot is to use a graduated neutral density filter. The filter tones down the sky while leaving the rest of the image unaffected. You mentioned fillters before. If you already have a polarizer I would purchase a grad neutral density filter and a slide mount system to attach it.

Good Luck and keep shooting.

[Greg McCary]

Thanks, I do have an ND filter. I will also try Sebs idea. I haven't used PS a whole lot, but I bought a bppk on it.