Western Land

[GB1]

I shot this at Guadalupe NP recently, a five-shot HDR converted to b&w. I think it does an ok job showing the ruggedness of the West.

G

[EOSThree]

I like this one. Nice conversion, maybe a slight halo along the sky/mountains, but it's OK and looks natural. The Yucca cut off in the lower LH corner gives me a little pause. Overall this is one of my favorites of your posts.

[Anbesol]

Very good stuff. It surprised me too, at first glance the contrast and hues are a little underwhelming, but then the subtle details just pop out in excellent unison. That may not make any sense, lol, but it makes sense in my head.

looks like a question mark on the tree. The only problem I have is the specular lighting in the grass, its fairly halo-ish and the glow and grain looks odd.
Hard to say much though at this resolution.

Well damn GB1 you may know I typically dislike HDR but I think you've done really well on this one, it looks natural. I'm surprised it was 5 shots, how did you merge them?

[Greg McCary]

I do see some haloing around the mountains that probably needs correcting, but your HDRs are as natural as most I see. I like them because of that. I guess it comes from your classic film background you use HDRs for what they were intended for.
Nice B&W conversion.

[GB1]

EOS - Thanks for the sharp observation on the bottom left yucca. Maybe I can remove it w/o too much hassle. Yep, that halo along the sky betrays the image having post processing (or in this situation, being an HDR). Not sure if that's good or bad, as it seems to add some (supernatural?) character to the shot that may be OK, depending on the image's usage.

Btw, it was converted using Photomatix's B&W converter. I normally tweak it a little so to not look right out of the tube, but I'm generally very happy with that effect.

Anbesol, Photomatix is my program of choice. If I'm not happy with what it does I try CS5's which I don't find too shabby either; I don't know how to do one manually but someone has suggested I learn so to control what those algorithms sometimes go haywire on (I had an HDR of Antelope Canyon where it made one area purple ).

You're right .. something looks a little silverish/glowing here. That flat dark tree is odd-looking by comparison, resembling a crow Btw, there were a lot of deer running around out there too; too bad I didn't catch any in the left side middle ground.

Greg, thanks for liking my HDRs. I really don't know if my film background has anything to do with it, I just know that I prefer that the viewer does not really know that I used an effect. I think every artist (which we are) has a different artistic vision on this sort of stuff. Oh and I may try to remove that sky haloing if it isn't super-difficult.

G