Upper Falls

lambertpix

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A bridge leading to the Gorge Trail at Old Man's Cave spans the Upper Falls. The Hocking Hills area is a great place to visit after a fresh snowfall.

This is a three-shot bracket tone-mapped with Nik's HDR software. Light editing in LR afterwards.

11264045426_a4a6678e12_b.jpg
 
It's a nice scene, and the HDR is done well, but the lighting is rather flat.

Jake


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It's a nice scene, and the HDR is done well, but the lighting is rather flat.

Thanks for the feedback. Do you have any suggestions to improve the look? Unfortunately, with the sun being low in the sky this time of year, the gorge doesn't see a huge variation in lighting. I was shooting in mixed clouds all day - this was one of the brackets with a little blue sky in it. I also started shooting larger brackets later in the day (mainly six stops), but I'm still working through processing for them.
 
Does it get any direct sun??

Jake


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Sometimes the light just works against you. You have to pick your times. Often, a cloudy day works best in the woods to get rid of those large ranges of stops. HDR seems to scrub the life out of a picture making it flat without contrast. I don't use it. I'd rather see darker shadows that allow a picture to "pop" a little. No one looks in the shadows that much for detail anyway. The eye is drawn to the lighter parts of a picture. Blacks can make a picture very dramatic. Don't be afraid of it. Examples of dark shadows.

Swamp | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

or Strength | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

or Swan in Autumn | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
 
Sometimes the light just works against you. You have to pick your times. Often, a cloudy day works best in the woods to get rid of those large ranges of stops. HDR seems to scrub the life out of a picture making it flat without contrast. I don't use it. I'd rather see darker shadows that allow a picture to "pop" a little. No one looks in the shadows that much for detail anyway. The eye is drawn to the lighter parts of a picture. Blacks can make a picture very dramatic. Don't be afraid of it. Examples of dark shadows.

Swamp | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

or Strength | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

or Swan in Autumn | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I disagree--HDR, when done properly, allows a scene with great tonal range to presented in such a way that is appealing to the viewer. Sometimes the difference between the highlights and the shadows are just so great that one image would never be able to successfully capture the light. With that being said, a single image taken in flat light will look flat, just the way an HDR taken in flat light will look flat. The light itself has more control over the flatness/contrast than the way the image was processed. The above image is a beautiful scene, but nothing could be done as the light is flat. Had the OP taken a single image, I would bet that it looks equally flat, if not even more so.

Best,
Jake



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
It's a nice scene, and the HDR is done well, but the lighting is rather flat.

Thanks for the feedback. Do you have any suggestions to improve the look? Unfortunately, with the sun being low in the sky this time of year, the gorge doesn't see a huge variation in lighting. I was shooting in mixed clouds all day - this was one of the brackets with a little blue sky in it. I also started shooting larger brackets later in the day (mainly six stops), but I'm still working through processing for them.

It's a very nice shot. I doubt you needed the HDR treatment -- a single raw capture would have probably been sufficient. The photo as you have it now is dark and lacking contrast. It just needs to be processed to remedy those two problems. The tricky part is that you do have critical diffuse highlights that have to be held from clipping. The histogram explains what you're dealing with. Here's an adjustment with the histogram inset. I left the photo still a little flat as the softness I think supports the feel of the fresh snowfall, but it would be easy to raise the contrast a little more.

$waterfall.webp

I made the adjustment in Photoshop and used a mask to protect the highlights. You can't do that in LR but you could come close in LR by applying a Curves correction. You want a curve that looks something like this.

Joe

$curve.webp
 
It's a very nice shot. I doubt you needed the HDR treatment -- a single raw capture would have probably been sufficient. The photo as you have it now is dark and lacking contrast. It just needs to be processed to remedy those two problems. The tricky part is that you do have critical diffuse highlights that have to be held from clipping. The histogram explains what you're dealing with. Here's an adjustment with the histogram inset. I left the photo still a little flat as the softness I think supports the feel of the fresh snowfall, but it would be easy to raise the contrast a little more.

...

I made the adjustment in Photoshop and used a mask to protect the highlights. You can't do that in LR but you could come close in LR by applying a Curves correction. You want a curve that looks something like this.

Joe

Thanks, Joe - I played with some of these images in LR, and I can see what you're talking about. This will definitely help with the rest of the batch!
 
HDR isn't "for" anything any more than black&white is. HDR is a set of techniques and tools, which can be and frequently are used to provide several different looks and effects.
 

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