What’s Your Preference?

Krusty79 · #1 (**permalink**) 09-01-2011, 04:05 PM

I am accepting EOBeav's challenge to post an image for a critique. I recently returned from a two week camping trip to the national parks in spectacular Southern Utah. I was very pleased with this image taken at the Dead Horse Point State Park near Moab/Canyonlands. I bracketed my shots and was thinking of doing an exposure blend when I decided to run the bracketed images through the HDR merge function in Paint Shop Pro and I thought it turned out pretty well.

I am open to any feedback on the composition and image processing, so any praise/scorn/comments/suggestions are welcome. I know I could have used a smaller aperture, but I messed up and thought I was shooting at f/8 or f/11.

f/7.1
1/25 of a second
ISO 200
18mm focal length

Krusty79 · #2 (**permalink**) 09-03-2011, 08:15 PM

59 looks and no comments? I'm giving this a bump to see if anyone responds.

Maybe someone can say if they like this less-processed version better:

milosh · #3 (**permalink**) 09-03-2011, 08:52 PM

Hey Greg,

yeah...to be honest with you, I took two looks myself, wanting to comment, but somehow I couldn't phrase my thoughts exactly as I wanted, so I took off. You know I can't be anything but honest in critique (and life!)... I'm fine with your overall processing, and there's little difference between the two versions. I'm sorry, but I find this image lacking a real interesting subject. You clearly were near some great scenery, but to me, this photo just doesn't show it. The composition is effective, but only effective as it can be considering there's nothing really interesting to hold my attention. Another thing, I think you tried hard to capture something when weather wasn't really working for you. I've been in situations where I've expected great sunsets bursting with colour (just because the Sun wasn't obstruced by clouds) to find myself looking at a sunset with rather bland colours. I think that's part of what happened here.

Krusty79 · #4 (**permalink**) 09-03-2011, 09:35 PM

milosh,

I appreciate your honesty. I see what you mean about the lack of a subject and the sunset. I really like the foreground in this shot, but I see it doesn't really lead to a compelling rock formation or spectacular sunset. Since I only had one night to shoot from this location and saw there were clouds in the sky, I was hoping for a great sunset, but this one wasn't anything special. I tried to get the most that I could out of it. After reading your comments, I wonder if I subconsciously tried to make up for the lack of the subject/great sunset by cranking up the HDR processing.

I was on a two week trip to the national parks of southern Utah and was hoping for some spectacular sunsets, but I don't recall seeing any the whole time, although I saw plenty of clouds/storms/lightning. I was really hoping to get some great sunset shots on the trip and this was as close as I got. Well, there's always tomorrow...

Thanks again,
Greg

EOBeav · #5 (**permalink**) 09-03-2011, 09:45 PM

Thanks for taking the EOBeav challenge. :-)

Gotta respectfully disagree with milosh here. Don't confuse "object" with "subject" in photography. I think that little dippedy-do in the lower right corner creates sufficient foreground interest. A little tree or stump or shrub or something may have been a nice touch, but compositionally this works for me. Also, there are some interesting contours and textures before I see the starburst.

Editing, your colors are too pale for my tastes. I took the liberty of bumping up your contrast, increasing your saturation, and tweaking your white balance just a bit. It's not perfect, but it was about a 3 minute job in GIMP. I was just dying to see more pinks and blues in that sky. Hopefully that was ok; if you need me to take it down just let me know.

PSP actually did a good job of blending this. If you can bring out the colors a little more, I think you've got a winner.

milosh · #6 (**permalink**) 09-03-2011, 10:13 PM

Rick, I have to admit that I'm surprised by how much more interesting your processing made this shot (especially the foreground) and I agree that there are sufficiently interesting foreground objects, I still stand behind my comment about the subject. But hey, that's just me! The processing did make it a more enjoyable/worthy photo!

Krusty79 · #7 (**permalink**) 09-03-2011, 11:17 PM

Thanks for taking time to do the edit, Rick. It definitely has a lot more pop. I'm going to try to do an exposure blend to see if I can improve my HDR version.

Krusty79 · #8 (**permalink**) 09-04-2011, 04:41 AM

Okay, here's the exposure blend version using a layer mask. I like this better than the HDR versions. I didn't want to overdo the saturation...

flytyer57 · #9 (**permalink**) 09-04-2011, 04:56 AM

I'm left wondering, if this is a sunset, what does that rock wall in the background look like during a sunrise? I'll bet it could hold a whole wonder with first rays.