Hi all,
I'm new to this forum, and after reading through some posts I thought it might be fun to join in.
I've been shooting for several years now, and while I shoot pretty much everything and anything, landscapes are my favorite. I do a lot of post-production work in Photoshop, and I use a Wacom Graphic Tablet (the Intuos3 for those in the know). I thought I'd dabble with the pictures on this thread and see what you guys thought.
The one thing I have to say about those who feel 'altering' photographs is somehow ignoble or 'cheating', I would like to quote Adams, "You don't take a photograph, you make a photograph". The initial capture is just the first step, in my opinion. The fun really starts once you are sitting down at the screen!
Here are my 5 minute tweaks (not perfect, but hopefully the idea gets across).
In these, I tweaked saturation (do a Ctrl-U and bring the master sat to +15-30); increased the exposure on the tree/bushes (it was slightly underexposed in the original); adding some minor vignettes to bring the eye closer to the subject matters; and did some subtle dodging and burning and each of the three categories (shadows, midtones, highlights), using the pressure sensitive stylus of the graphic tablet (it's almost like painting, those who haven't tried it I encourage you to! It's very enjoyable).
Not sure why these are red-Xs in my preview post. If these still don't show up, go to
http://picasaweb.google.com/AJIppo/OnlineForums/
PS There might also be attachments -- still figuring out how to present pics...