GeoffreySchmid Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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kevindar wrote:
Geoffrey, you are fantastic at using the gnd, as I do not see the transition point, and its not obvious. I am also impressed you got such good dof, as the flowers in the foreground looke like they are about a foot away. Just wonderful images. thanks for sharing the technical details.
You touch on a point that I can't help but elaborate on. I feel that use of the GND is becoming a lost technique in this age of bracketing for exposure and blending in PP, but there's something about it that I like - it simply looks different, and brings to mind elements of classic images of Rowell, Muench, etc, that I like. Not to say I'm a master, but I thought I'd go into more detail, and I'll use the first image as an example. Many here will see the transition and otherwise dislike the results. That's cool.
First, you have to pick the right one for the job. Judge the exposure difference. This image called for a relatively strong filter (3 stops here - I have a reverse grad but it usually renders the foreground too light for me), and the fairly unbroken line with sun at the horizon presented for use of a hard grad. (Many nowadays will simply handhold a filter in front of the lens and wave it around to blur the gradation, and proclaim that PP would have been better.) I always use a holder and preview a lot to find the best placement. I carefully placed the transition line at an angle to follow the curve of the most prominent hill. This is not easy facing into the sun, but the DOF preview function of your camera will serve well. A little up, a little down, makes a huge difference.
In PP I dodge the highlights and upper mids in the transition area with luminosity masks (in this case the right third of the image was the most important). This is mostly tedious and trial and error for me - the wrong move will create haloes and other unnatural-looking effects. Sometimes aggressively dodging a single high-lit area that extends somewhat through the transition will do the trick (though if it extends enough, you should have used the soft-edge grad).
One of the problems with using a grad is that your foreground might be relatively lighter than the sky, even following the rules, which looks unnatural in most cases and is a pet peeve of mine. This said, I make that mistake all the time, unfortunately. The object is to balance out the exposure, but often you want to make it better than what the eye/brain remembers!
BTW, the blossoms in the FG were but a foot away.
Regards,
Geoff
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