Just some pictures

[ZachH]

Lemme know what you think.

 

[Rudha]

#1 in my opinion the road which should have been a leading line is now dividing photograph into two parts i am struggling to decide which part to look at....i think there is too much information ....
#2 this one i love...it's really dramatic...but the sun is too bright ..next time try a polarizer or a composite image ...take two pictures one exposing the sun and the other exposing clouds and combine them in PS or other softwares...
and always keep shooting.

 

[bigtwinky]

#1 I agree with Rudha in that there are two different things going on here, the road and the landscape, and my eye doesn't know which to focus on. I'm all for having some interesting foreground images in a landscape shot (and I think the best ones have some), you have to be careful that the foreground interest doesn't become a foreground subject.
The landscape itself is so-so. The sky is blown and the rest is just trees with random buildings.
The road isn't at an interesting angle either. I'm also not a fan of the colour of the dry grass in contrast with the landscape.
Maybe if you would of moved to the left and tried to angle a shot to get the road and that piece of hill...or maybe somewhere to get higher up?

#2 Very nice sky. I find the image a bit dark overall. Upping the exposure a tad and the saturation would really help make the blue pop and contrast with the rest of the cloud shots. It might also bring out more detail and lines in the clouds, adding more to the image. The problem with this is upping the exposure would mean the sun would be even brighter. This is where an HDR would work well.

If you shot in RAW (which you should be), you can take this one image and then adjust the exposure down to -1 to -2 or so. Save as a high res JPG. Open the same RAW again and adjust the exposure +1 to +2. Save as a high res JPG. Open the same image again and save as is (or minor tweaks). Then look into merging the three as an HDR (Photoshop can do this, I use Photomatix). You'll have to play with sliders and adjustements, but you should be able to bring out more colour and detail in the clouds while not blowing out the sun more.

Or try slightly upping the exposure / brightness, saturation, sharpness and THEN converting to a BW and adjusting contrast

 

[Rudha]

If you shot in RAW (which you should be), you can take this one image and then adjust the exposure down to -1 to -2 or so. Save as a high res JPG. Open the same RAW again and adjust the exposure +1 to +2. Save as a high res JPG. Open the same image again and save as is (or minor tweaks). Then look into merging the three as an HDR (Photoshop can do this, I use Photomatix). You'll have to play with sliders and adjustements, but you should be able to bring out more colour and detail in the clouds while not blowing out the sun more.

Or try slightly upping the exposure / brightness, saturation, sharpness and THEN converting to a BW and adjusting contrast

huh....didn't think of that it would save me the work of taking three separate pictures on a dinky tripod...( don't have auto-bracketing on D40)
would there be a difference between this and a true HDR?

 

[bigtwinky]

Yes there is.

Being able to capture multiple pictures at different exposure levels allows you to get a much better and truer contrast and colours. You get a much nicer dynamic range when you take the photos yourself.

Doing it with 1 exposure is something I consider ghetto. As in, its do-able, it can look good, but its something I do when I see a scene where HDR would work and I don't have a tripod. I don't despair, I get a decent result. However, you have to take a GOOD photo... as in know how to take a proper image as a badly taken image will be much harder to ghetto HDR.

I would compare it to getting a nice DOF in camera (using wide aperture, long focal lenght, distance subject-background) vs doing a blur style effect in photoshop after on a photo where there is no DOF.

 

[Rudha]

Yes there is.

Being able to capture multiple pictures at different exposure levels allows you to get a much better and truer contrast and colours. You get a much nicer dynamic range when you take the photos yourself.

Doing it with 1 exposure is something I consider ghetto. As in, its do-able, it can look good, but its something I do when I see a scene where HDR would work and I don't have a tripod. I don't despair, I get a decent result. However, you have to take a GOOD photo... as in know how to take a proper image as a badly taken image will be much harder to ghetto HDR.

I would compare it to getting a nice DOF in camera (using wide aperture, long focal lenght, distance subject-background) vs doing a blur style effect in photoshop after on a photo where there is no DOF.

ok first off ..ghetto HDR:lmao:

i thought there would be some diff.....nothing beats a sturdy old tripod..and thanx for the quick reply