Very pretty, painterly feel.
Maybe a bit of shadow recovery below? Possibly crop bottom third of grass and a bit from the right , preserving the diagonal of the field and bringing it into the corner of the image.
Just my 2 cents.
Scott G
Thank you for your response. Finally someone did and I appreciate it.
I think that I have taken the shadow recovery in LR almost all there is. I will see. I was concern about taking off the right because I was afraid it would move the tree too much to the center.
Definitly I will investigate taking off the bottom. I think that will move the horizen more to the 1/3.
This is one of those shots that would have benefited from combining a dark one and a bright one of the same scene. Then you'd have detail instead of noise in those shadows and still have the rich colours in the sky.
I like this type of shot. On this particular one, however, I find the bright strip of cloud coming out of the tree to be annoying. It dominates the scene too much and is in an unsuitable position because it leads my attention out of the image.
A program such as Neat Image Pro might be able to clean up some of that shadow noise but it probably needs to have a separate image with a clear featureless area from which to get a noise profile. This particular image has features everywhere and might confuse the NI profile generator. (You want it to see noise only - not image detail - or it may delete some of the detail when reducing the noise).
The image has some elements going for it. For one thing getting good colors and favorable cloud formations for a sunet takes patience and luck. Someone suggested this would be a good shot for bracketing with the intention of merging exposures for more dynamic range - that would be one approach but I dunno how it would come out here because you just don't expect bright grass in the foreground after a sunset and it might look a bit unnatural. You never know until you try though. You cannot bring the foreground out in this picture anyway because there's not enough detail. Therefore the best thing to do is darken it completely and try for a silouhette type of picture. I took a run at in a way I'd process it to try and get the most pleasing result. I did a very exaggerated curves adjustment here to totally darken the foreground and most of the tree (silouhette approach) yet keep the sky bright. I then dodged parts of the sky to help with contrast. Anyway, this is what I came up with.
My approach is really drastic here and may not be to everyone's taste. I'm just trying to show an example though and the colors could easily be pulled back using curves if your taste isn't to this kind of "bloody sky" extreme.
the only complaint i have is that cloud coming down in a line across the sky, perhaps using some PS work with the burn tool could help tone it down, as the straight line it gives is visually distracting
jlin wrote:
great image, very reminiscent of a painting =]
the only complaint i have is that cloud coming down in a line across the sky, perhaps using some PS work with the burn tool could help tone it down, as the straight line it gives is visually distracting
=]
That "cloud coming down in line" is a jet trail. I didn't know what to do with it. I will try some different things in PS.
perspective wrote:
The image has some elements going for it. For one thing getting good colors and favorable cloud formations for a sunet takes patience and luck. Someone suggested this would be a good shot for bracketing with the intention of merging exposures for more dynamic range
.......
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I did bracket exposures and so I might try merging, but I felt the same way about the "unnaturalness". I wanted to go with the black silhouette and forground.
My approach is really drastic here and may not be to everyone's taste. I'm just trying to show an example though and the colors could easily be pulled back using curves if your taste isn't to this kind of "bloody sky" extreme
Maybe not. But that is exactly what I was trying to accomplish.
I second Alan's response. I think the bottom half would benefit from a second exposure to bring out any color or detail on the ground. I would think taking it to a darker shadow or going for a lighter more balanced exposure would be nice.
You have enough difference in the brightness you could easily get a stop or more and load it into and HDR app for a really dramatic exposure.
