JimFox Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Hey Andre,
It's great to see you out trying new things. As for #2 and 3, don't bring up the exposure, the best way is to bring up the shadows. That will protect the highlights from blowing out. Also if I recall you are using Capture NX2? If so, then in scenes like this where there is no sky, don't be afraid to use a stronger DLighting setting to bring out more DR. The best way to deal with it is to use a luminosity mask in Photoshop where you basically do the double Raw conversion. One for the highlights and one for the darker areas and then blend it with a mask based off the highlights, this then pulls through the non overexposed sections into the blown out highlights, thus preserving them, but brightening the whole overall scene for you. That gives you the widest DR on the image, and then from there you can pull back on the midtones to add contrast, or you can use the contrast adjustment itself just watching to make sure the highlights don't get blown.
I hope that makes sense.
With #4 and 5, it was a weak composition more than your playing in post to make more of an abstract. Try the same thing later when you can get your shutter speed down to the 1/5th to 1 sec range, and both of those same compositions would have looked radically different. If you don't have an ND filter, perhaps getting one of those would be in order? For brighter shots like this a 10 stop would be great, or perhaps the normal 3 stop ND and a Polarizer together? Though if you are still shooting with the D300, if I recall the min ISO is 200 right? You might need the 10 stop ND. I got a B+W 10 stop for I think just a little over $100 at BH Photo. That's not too bad.
Jim
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