Golf Course at Dusk

[Tim Spencer]

I think this is ok, but doesn't pop. Looking for tips for photos like this taken during the golden hour.



Camera Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS
Exposure 1/80
Aperture f/6.3
Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Focal Length 18 mm
ISO Speed 200

Thx!

Tim

[Doug Sundseth]

For this sort of scene, the big advantages of golden-hour photography are the interesting shadows and the nice, golden light. To get those things, you have to have part of the scene (at least) sunlit. It's hard to tell, but it kind of looks like there might be some direct sunlight hitting the ground on the far side of the fairway in the background that is providing a nice color contrast between the lit and unlit grass, for instance.

Here, your foreground is entirely shadowed, so you mostly have open shade rather than dawn light. I'd recommend looking for a place (or time of the year) when you can get raking sunlight rather than shadow.

[Krusty79]

The sky is still pretty bright at this time of day. The bright sky has caused the golf course to be underexposed. I would suggest taking the shot 15-30 minutes later when the sun is closer to the horizon or even as it is disappearing on the horizon. You could try a graduated neutral density filter to reduce the brightness of the sky relative to the ground, but it may difficult to use when there are a lot of trees on the horizon. You're going to need a tripod if you don't already have one.

I would also suggest trying a composition where a fairway or cart path provides a leading line into the image.

[Corey Thompson]

It doesn't pop partly because there's no detail in the sky. In order for your foreground to be exposed properly and not be too dark, you had to overexpose the sky.

The foreground doesn't pop much because raw files don't typically have embedded color profiles and when you convert to jpeg a default profile such as sRGB was probably used, which doesn't produce the same effect as the color profile that is applied in camera in your preview mode. Lightroom has a camera calibration panel in the development tab that allows you to assign different color profiles. There are also other adjustments you can make in lightroom that can help your photo pop, such as vibrance, saturation, black balance, white balance, etc.

What I would try doing next time is mount the camera on a tripod and take two or three exposures, one evenly exposed, one under exposed to get detail in the sky, and a third that is brighter to bring out detail in areas that might typically be in shadow. Then import into photoshop and use exposure blending techniques to blend the three photos. I'd suggest doing an HDR conversion but I think HDR is a bit played out now and exposure blending will give you a more natural looking photo.

You can try waiting later in the evening when the sky is darker, but then the foreground will basically be a silhouette and you'll need to crank up the ISO to really bring any detail back into the foreground, which could produce a grainy photo. It all depends on what type of shot you're trying to take. If you want a sunset shot with good detail in the sky and the foreground is a dark silhouette, then continue shooting after the sun has set, that's when you get the most color in the sky.

[High_Speed]

Actually, you've actually got a pretty usable shot, all but the sky. Unfortunately the sky is completely blown out, and there is no detail left.

It looks like the camera tried to do it's best at exposing for both, and it's "guess" was wrong.

Perhaps as others have said, either wait a little later until you can do a longer exposure without washing out the sky and get more color/detail in the sky, or take an HDR type approach and take multiple exposures and stack them back together. You could do an exposure or two for the sky, then an exposure for the foreground, and another for the background trees/fairway....then stack them all back together. If nothing else, just two exposures, one like you've got and another for the sky would be better than what you've got here (no sky at all).

Here's an example of what you can do, which would be a lot nicer with a sky.

[Tim Spencer]

Thank you everyone! Great suggestions - I appreciate your time.