Some shots from my recent TN/NC trip

[jamesbjenkins]

Hey all, I recently took some vacation with my wife's family to Tennessee and the Maddie Valley area in western North Carolina. The landscape there is absolutely breathtaking, and I came prepared to give my camera a workout. I don't typically shoot a lot of landscape or still life, but that's what this thread contains. I feel like my HDR style has really evolved and matured in the last year or two. No more cartoony, overcooked haloed awfulness anymore. Going for a more natural look with these. Please enjoy and feel free to CC if you'd like.

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4. Pano from the highest point I could get to in Maddie Valley. The elevation from the vantage point here is somewhere around 4500 ft ASL.



5. Another pano from the same location, this one will be on my wall soon.



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8. Something a little different. This is from a lounge at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville. There was something about the metal and the tones in this little alcove that just begged for an HDR shot.



9. Centennial Park in Nashville; I'm really digging the water in this one.



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All these images were handheld, so please forgive the minor ghosting in some areas, especially some clouds. I'll be posting some more highlights of the trip, mostly street and editorial style work, soon.

Thanks for looking!

 

[Heitz]

As for the HDR - yea, I don't think they're overcooked, but you are definitely right at that border. In #6 I see a halo.

Also, you are amping the saturation on the blue channel for the sky, right? I've found that using saturation on blue for sky looks unnatural. Instead, leave the saturation as shot and instead *decrease* the *luminance* of the blue channel. Its counter-intuitive, but it really works.

 

[jamesbjenkins]

Believe it or not, that haloing in #6 is in the metered exposure SOOC, I tried to mask it out but I couldn't get a result I was happy with.

As for the poppy blues, it's more contrast and clarity than saturation, vibrance is (+20) on most of these, but saturation is SOOC. I did drop the luminance (-20) on the aquas and blues in LR5, which gave a much richer tone to the skies.