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Re: Fall Cliff
This is purely from a technical standpoint:
The sky is over exposed in some areas and the rock/tree is mostly underexposed. If you like that or that was your intention, then ignore this. If you would have rather had a nice blue sky with clouds that have texture and rocks that aren't dark, here are some tips....
You can fix this to an extent in post processing (photoshop) using a few layers. So you'd make at least 2 copies of the main image, then fix the sky on one layer and the rock/tree on another. erase (using a layer mask) the appropriate parts to make the whole scene well exposed. I would use Curves or Levels attached to a clipping mask (so it only affects the layer under it) to fix this.
Now, that method is going to add some noise or ruin details in your photo, sometimes is hard to do, and on most images that are really under/overexposed it won't help enough. This imo should be a last resort.
Next you can fix it by doing HDR (which is similar method to the post processing except you take multiple exposureses). So you'd expose for the sky, the top of the trees, the rock, and maybe the background mountain. Then you merge those together and fine tune (there are programs like Photomatix that do this automatically or you could use layer masks in photoshop)
.... Now if you don't like the computer or feel that it's cheating you can expose for the sky and then use a flash to light up the foreground. So you expose for the sky and then use a flash aimed at the rock/tree trunk to light them up enough to match the sky's brightness a little better.
Or you can wait until a better time of day when the light isn't going to cause such intense shadows/highlights. It's called the Golden Hour and ~15 mins before sunrise to ~45 minutes after sunrise and again ~45 minutes before sunset to ~15 minutes after sunset. The sky will be a bit darker and hopefully require roughly the same exposure as the rock. Also... Perhaps if you waited until sunset or sunrise, the sun would be shining on this part of the rock (which is in a shadow). Although if this is the north face of the rock (and you're in the northern hemisphere), you're SOL.
You can also use a neutral density gradient filter. It's a filter that goes over your lenses and ~half of it has a gradient that blocks light. So it will underexpose half the photo to even out exposure issues. So say at sunset taking a picture of the horizon the ground needs 10s of exposure and the sky/sun needs 1s... The ND gradient filter will make it so you just use 10s and everything comes out evenly exposed. There are different strengths and I believe you can rotate them. So like here you could rotate it so the dark side covers the sky and then exposure for the foreground.
There are probably other methods but I think picking a better time to shoot, filters, and HDR are the most popular.
Last edited by caleb : 10-20-2009 at 04:03 PM.
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