A Big Hill

[splatt]

I basically take two kinds of photos...landscapes and buildings. I took this photo the first week i had ny Canon 400D and i hadn't bought a polarizing filter for it yet so this is pretty natural...any thoughts on how to make this sort of shot better?



thnx
SplaTT

[Nicole]

I had a look at the EXIF info for your shot on Flickr and I noticed that it was taken at a shutter speed of 1/125. If you want to make the colours a bit richer without using a polarizer, you could try under-exposing the image by a little bit, so maybe just speed up your shutter speed in Shutter Priority mode until you get the colours that you're looking for.

Something else you could try with this sort of shot is shooting at a different time of day (sunrise, sunset, the "magic hour") to try to give it some more shadows or colours.

One final suggestion might be to try making a more interesting foreground to this type of picture. I noticed on your stream you had some very good landscape shots where the foreground had more interest to it such as your Yarra Valley shot or your Eucalyptus and Smoke Covered Hills shot. Because this shot has very little in the foreground, and it's nearly all green, it seems a little flat.

Hope some of that was helpful

[SueB]

Getting something in the foreground can really make the difference in wide open landscapes. When I take landscapes now its my number one task to find an interesting foreground subject to accentuate the beautiful backdrop like you have here.
I usually walk around with my camera off the tripod and go low first to start my looking.
I like the variety of colour greens in this photo. I would be tempted to crop out the sky altogether and to straighten the horizon. I find in landscapes that I search out the horizon very quickly so its important that everything is A ok in that area or interest in looking further can drop off.
I hope that some of this can be useful to you.

[hitkaiser]

Seems like there's a yellowish tint over the image, is that how it really looks like? Perhaps some colour correction if this was the case

[deck]

Try taking the picture at a different time, or a different season, and watch out for nicer clouds that you can take advantage of, and yes, please try underexposing it, it helps in capturing richer colors

[splatt]

Thnx for the tips guys

The Canon certaily does make it easier to take good shots...all i need to do is brush up on using an SLR after point and clicking for so long.

[Darren Rowse]

Nice to find your here SplaTT - didn't realise it was you :-)

[dynaglyde99]

It appears as if the mountain may benefit from more detail.

Its hard to tell. This could be because the same shot would benefit from being taken early AM or late afternoon where the lower angle of the sun would create some contast in the trees and warm up the scene. Also, the mountain may look a little sharper using a smaller aperature. The trees in the foregound are sharp wheras the hill looks a little out of focus. With landscapes I like to use the smallest aperature possible and shoot in the late afternoon.