Slovenia I

[milosh]

Hey everyone,

here's a photo from my hiking trip to Slovenia in May, to the Kamnik-Savinja Alps..
This was taken at dawn, I chose this composition because I wanted to include all the three elements, the peak on the left, the snow covered peak on far right (we climbed that one the day before) and the valley filled with fog in the middle. This is unsharpened so don't mind if it's a bit blurry on the edges.

I have four questions:

1. Do you find the colour (hue) of the sky unnatural/akward? I didn't alter it at all, I just increased its saturation.

2. Do you notice, and if you do, do you find it distracting/unreal that the upper left corner of the sky is a bit darker than the upper right corner? Because, the Sun is rising 90 degrees left from me, it would be normal if the left corner was brighter than the right one. Do you think I should try to change that?

3. Do you find the whole shadowed area (the forest and the grass) too bright? Or too saturated/vibrant?

4. Do you see any negative consequences of post-processing in the sky, such as banding?

Any other points and remarks are welcome of course.

This was single exposure:

Camer: Nikon D60
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f16
Shutter speed: 1/3 sec.
ISO: 100

[Doug Sundseth]

I don't see anything that I find objectionable in the sky. I'm used to seeing the effect of a circular polarizer on a wide-angle lens and I mostly don't notice it anymore, so my opinion might not be that of your intended audience.

I don't have a problem with the greens being either too bright or too vibrant. If anything, I might pull up the shadows just a touch, but I like what you have here and I tend to overprocess, so you might do best to just ignore what I would do.

Rather than (or in addition to) increasing the saturation in the sky, you might want to darken it a bit. That will give you more vibrant color (IME) in a realistic way.

All that said, I really like the photo. The composition is very strong and I find interesting bits throughout the depth of the field of view.

Thank you for sharing the photo.

[milosh]

Thank you Doug! I'll try playing a bit more with it when I get some free time, in a few days. Actually, I had a Multiply blend mode applied to the sky at first, but in addition to increasing saturation, it also darkened the sky too much, it made all the colours muted somehow. Then I ditched the layer and increased the saturation only. I'll give it some more time to see if I come up with a more pleasing combination of settings.

[beetwo77]

Nice photo I say

I agree that darkening the sky would help and bringing up the shadows. If you are using photoshop, try using layer masks so that the brightening or darking, saturation, whatever you like, is only applied to a certain part of the image, Makes all the difference I think. Nice work though.

[Krusty79]

I don't think the sky looks unnatural. Did you use a polarizer? I don't think any part of the image looks too vibrant. I would be tempted to crop out some of the sky. I think the landscape is much more interesting than the sky and deserves to take up more than 2/3 of the image. Nice shot, though!

[milosh]

Originally Posted by beetwo77

Nice photo I say

I agree that darkening the sky would help and bringing up the shadows. If you are using photoshop, try using layer masks so that the brightening or darking, saturation, whatever you like, is only applied to a certain part of the image, Makes all the difference I think. Nice work though.

Thanks! As I said, I'll give it a try and see if I come up with anything better. I use masks all the time, I would be nowhere without masks.

Originally Posted by Krusty79

I don't think the sky looks unnatural. Did you use a polarizer? I don't think any part of the image looks too vibrant. I would be tempted to crop out some of the sky. I think the landscape is much more interesting than the sky and deserves to take up more than 2/3 of the image. Nice shot, though!

Thanks Krusty! The fact is that I'm not sure whether or not I used a cpl. I think I didn't have it on that morning. I'll try cropping to see where it takes me, but right now I'm afraid it would ruin the balance (the rot).

[milosh]

Ok, I tried cropping the shot and I have a feeling that the composition is more effective now. It's funny how we don't see some simple stuff like that. However, I'm not so fond of non-standard aspect ratios like 16:9... I find the "crop 2" more pleasing, which is a bit higher than "crop 1" which is a true 16:9. What do you think?

[milosh]

Ok, I finished and uploaded a version but now I have another question:

when viewing the photo on my laptop the colour of the grass and the forest looks nice, not too green, not too vibrant. But, when I view it on other monitors it looks way to vibrant, at least to me. I'm not sure how is this possible. I tried to make another version with desaturated grass but I can't reproduce the sharpness I've had with this first jpeg, although I do everything the same. I don't know what's going on, I'm puzzled by this.

So, is the grass and tree tops too saturated/too vibrant in your opinion?



A guest pass so you can view it in larger res. if you wish to:
http://flickr.com/gp/26469995@N03/oF51v9

[Doug Sundseth]

Nothing looks too bright or vibrant to me. I really like the final version.

The problem you are seeing might be a monitor calibration issue. It's pretty common for people to crank the brightness up quite high on monitors to make them a bit easier to use in a bright room. This can make a photo look very different. All you can really do is calibrate your own monitor and hope that the weird calibrations used by your viewers work with their preferences.

[milosh]

Thanks Doug!

Yeah, I know about monitor calibration but I've never encountered this much of a difference. And I believe that my laptop monitor is less bright than it should be, because it's 4 years old, and when I switch to it after looking at a new laptop or pc monitor, I see that it's way less bright than the new ones. But as soon as I start working on it, my eyes adapt and I don't notice it anymore. Anyway, I'm saving for a monitor calibration kit, among other things.