The Quicksilver Hillside;Critique please.

[starriderrick]

Another landscape capture. Almaden Quicksilver county park.
Thought this may work. I'm here to learn. Please pick this apart.
I liked the light play on the hillside.
A circular polar' filter was used.

Your thoughts?
Rick

[MarcusK]

Ok, let's see now (cracks fingers..)

The sky is beautiful...:thumbsup:

Composition wise... I would have preferred the curve of the path to be positioned a little more to the right, since it starts off a bit to the center... of course this would mean changing angles to keep the tree where it is on the frame, which may not have been possible....

Top colors are very nice...but then suddenly it goes black which is where i feel the image lost me... Not much detail to be seen there....

Well... that's me and my little opinions.... hope this helps

Marc

[starriderrick]

That's what I thought about the exposure. How do you expose properly when you have very bright sky, deep shadows? Is it possible ?
Thanks.
Rick

[MarcusK]

Oh...well...i dont have the answers to everything...hahaha....:P

Bracketing would be a good idea in this situation (i'm sure others will have more input as to other ways of doing this)...
or
Basically....You get the reading for the sky...then the reading for shadowy part...and expose somewhere in between... Haven't had this issue before in landscape...but this is how i handled it in studio shots...


Marc

[Greg McCary]

You might invest into a graduated filter. Besides maybe some heavy PS work, or two exposures and HDR. I think your options here are very limited. When I have a shot like this, I try and bracket the shot until I get best balance betwen the sky and foreground.
Greg

[readingr]

Rick,

Is this a RAW image. If it is then you can bracket the shot for sky, highlights, and shadow and then merge all three pictures using PSE, PS, PSP and some other tools I'm sure.

All you do add a blend mode that brings out the best, I normally try lighter, screen, luminance or any of the others,

Then select the area that you want merged and add an appropriate amount of feathering 100-200 and then either use masks or eraser to bring out the underneath detail.

On the pic I am not sure about the paths, I think I would like to see a bit more of the what looks like a hairpin completed.

Sky needs a little work to stop the hot spots in the clouds.

Gives me the feeling of tranquility.

Roger

[Greg McCary]

Rick,

Is this a RAW image. If it is then you can bracket the shot for sky, highlights, and shadow and then merge all three pictures using PSE, PS, PSP and some other tools I'm sure.

All you do add a blend mode that brings out the best, I normally try lighter, screen, luminance or any of the others,

Then select the area that you want merged and add an appropriate amount of feathering 100-200 and then either use masks or eraser to bring out the underneath detail.

On the pic I am not sure about the paths, I think I would like to see a bit more of the what looks like a hairpin completed.

Sky needs a little work to stop the hot spots in the clouds.

Gives me the feeling of tranquility.

Roger

Rodger,
What tool do you use to merge the images? I haven't had much luck using the same picture with HDR..

[readingr]

Greg,

The only tools I have is PSE 2 and PSP X. I use a combination of both depending on what I am doing.

You can do all of what I suggested in PSE 2 using layers and the eraser tool or If you select and then use the adjustment layer you can create a mask in PSE 2. To start with I'd use PSE to carry out the initial blending as its easier than PSP because I know it better than PSP.

PSP X makes masks easier and has curves.

Never used HDR so wouldn't be able to comment on it.

Roger

[MB1]

That's what I thought about the exposure. How do you expose properly when you have very bright sky, deep shadows? Is it possible ?
Thanks.
Rick

This photo calls out for a graduated neutral density filter of probably 2 or 3 stops. The sky is perfectly exposed and looks great but on my monitor the foreground has almost no detail and is close to pure black.

A split or graduated ND filter with the dark half covering the sky would allow enough exposure on the foreground for all the details to come out without the sort of too bright look you would get with a flash.

[J-Dogg Productions]

i like the sky and the tree looks good where it is, the only thing i would say is the bottom of the picture is to dark and i would like it to be sharper

jay

[lalotafoya]

Rick the sky is really, nice, I can see that you have tryed to lighten the hill side, I think the hills should be lightend more and the sky darkend. I have tryed taking
mixed lighting landscape pictures and its really hard to get the right exposure for booth sided, i thik if you had a smaller shaded area a flash would have helped ,
but not for this shot.

[Has He Lost His Mind?]

I think either tone mapping or HDR would've helped a lot. The sky is beautiful, but I'd like to see more of the tree.