Old Riverside Snake Rail Fence

[PixelRabbit]

Hey Light Guru, thanks for your thoughts, I was going to gasp and be offended that you picked on my cloning job..... until I zoomed wayyy in on it

No need to zoom WAY in there are obvious cloning lines that are easy to see on the right portion you removed. Its easily seen just in the web posting without zooming in.

Now... the cooking I will defend a bit here, admittedly this is only my second tonemap but my personal taste tends to lean towards the more conservative end of HDR and this isn't making me go ugh too much ... or wow that's definitely HDR! I might feel differently as I learn more but as of now I have to respectfully say I think it was cooked juuuuust about enough

But it DOES look obviously HDR. In fact I don't even think the scene had enough dynamic range even need to do an HDR. When you were metering he scene how may stops different were the shadows and the highlights?

Perhaps I should have clarified **I** needed to zoom in closer because of my personal vision issues and trying to get stupid prescriptions right etc... it truly looked ok to me with my currently blurry vision until I zoomed right in, I should have known better and will next time Just didn't want to toss that in there and come off as as a woe is me, this is my excuse, I just owned the error.

This is a single image tonemapped not multiple exposure HDR.

 

[FanBoy]

I like the texture of the fence, the composition and overall naturalness to the photo edit. If that's dandelion growing in the foreground, it would have been nice to have those in bloom as a color element.

 

[kathyt]

I think it is a bit over saturated.

 

[Derrel]

My eye goes right to the river and the most-distant point. I like the old rail fence, but the shot's not coming together quite right...the rails are big in the foreground, but are not holding my eye, and the background doesn't have enough detail or substance to make it worthwhile, visually. I think the foreground rail fence needs to be shown a bit more on the bottom...it needs some kind of an anchor in the foreground, OR the background deserves sharp focus and more magnification through longer focal length.

The "scene" itself, in the real world, is neat of that I am sure...it has the old fence, plus a fairly old steel post, and the river behind, but the photo is not quite coming together as a whole for me...it's not clear what the goal is...is it the near/far relationship we're supposed to enjoy? Is it the fence's proximity to the river? Is it the state of disrepair on the rail fence? It's a good subject, and I think a good picture can be made there. The decision to clone out the bridge; while understandable, that changes the scene materially. I wonder if it might not be better to move to the right a bit, and show a different view of the river behind? I dunno...I grew up partly in farming country...scenes like this change a lot with the seasons and the weather and even the time of day and the shadows.

I'm not sure, but maybe you're trying to use one lens where another lens might lead to a better picture?

 

[PixelRabbit]

Thanks for your thoughts Fanboy, Kathy and Derrel

Derrel, you have pretty much described how I feel about just about every single landscape shot I take. I seem to struggle defining a focal point and balance and it all just ends up competing. I'm to the point with the ones of the river that I have not much clue because it is so familiar. I'm going to keep at it though, I know there are shots here, I just have to figure out where the heck they are!!
This was taken with the 18-200, there is a slope down to the river and I can't get back far enough without backing up a hill with the 100-400 although I haven't tried to shoot the river much with it yet.

 

[Steve5D]

A somewhat close inspection (and not even that close) reveals that it's been cloned. Still, it looks better. A few more steps and you could make that image sing...

 

[PixelRabbit]

Thanks Steve, I grabbed a pair of those cheap cheater reading glasses from the drug store yesterday and can see better with them than anything the doctor had tried, I now see the issue better (blush, can't believe I posted such a bad job). I'm going to try again and will post the results