Oops.. shot in poor light again.

[Optikal iLLusion]

I've had a bad habit lately of having shooting in not so desirable light.. not really on purpose.. i had intended to get out earlier in the day and it just didnt work out that way. This photo isnt what i would call under exposed i dont think. It is obviously shady though. The only things i changed in PP was the contrast and brightness a bit because i really didnt know what else to do. Also i feel that the photo is border line boring because of the lack of light here? Thoughts on this? What are some things i can do to make my landscape photos more interesting?


Small Castle by ~Prjct86 on deviantART


Shutter Speed:1/64 second
Aperture:F/5.0
Focal Length:43 mm
ISO Speed:250

[vainqueur]

I think there is nothing much you can do with the lights and Sun's ray destroying the scene. If not, you can use the stairs on the right to your advantage.

Either that or find a direction whereby the Sun is directly in front of you, then use it to form nice Silhouette of the castle.

[Optikal iLLusion]

How exactly is the sun "destroying" the scene? Not angry.. i just dont understand why the sun in this is a bad thing?

[vainqueur]

Originally Posted by Optikal iLLusion

How exactly is the sun "destroying" the scene? Not angry.. i just dont understand why the sun in this is a bad thing?

Maybe I should put it in another way, it depends on how you see things, if you know how to use the Sun to your advantage, it can do wonders, but kinda think the Sun in this scene is a bit too open and overexposed, maybe if the Sun is hidding behind the lot of trees, it can create nicely exposed Sun's ray towards you...

[RichardTaylor]

To me it appears that a lot it is underexposed, not completely - just murky..
Have a look the histogram - try a new layer, blend mode, screen, opacity to suite (40%?)
Then do a B&W conversion and see how it looks.

Beside the lack of contrast it really doesn't have a subject. Is it the whole scene or the creek or the stairs or the stone structure. If you get a chance to re shoot the subject (in different lighting or atmosphere?) try shooting from different viewpoints and see which one woks best.

-----------------

Re the sun it does add a bit of "atmosphere", but draws my eye right out of the picture.

[Optikal iLLusion]

Originally Posted by vainqueur

Maybe I should put it in another way, it depends on how you see things, if you know how to use the Sun to your advantage, it can do wonders, but kinda think the Sun in this scene is a bit too open and overexposed, maybe if the Sun is hidding behind the lot of trees, it can create nicely exposed Sun's ray towards you...

Ok that makes sense. I dont know how to use the sun to my advantage. Something ill have to look into. Thank you.

Originally Posted by RichardTaylor

To me it appears that a lot it is underexposed, not completely - just murky..
Have a look the histogram - try a new layer, blend mode, screen, opacity to suite (40%?)
Then do a B&W conversion and see how it looks.

This is helpful. Im still learning in PhotoShop as well. I really want to upgrade to CS5 from Elements. Mostly because when i go to, lets say youtube, to look up "how to" videos thats what everyone is using. The tools and drop down menus and panels dont always translate to Elements very easily.

Originally Posted by RichardTaylor

Beside the lack of contrast it really doesn't have a subject. Is it the whole scene or the creek or the stairs or the stone structure. If you get a chance to re shoot the subject (in different lighting or atmosphere?) try shooting from different viewpoints and see which one woks best.

-----------------

Re the sin it does add a bit of "atmosphere", but draws my eye right out of the picture.

The subject was meant to be the stone structure. I dont have much knowledge about composition. I just rely on my eyes and when they say "Oh that looks like it would be a good shot" i take it. I end up deleting quite few photos off my card after i get home and give them a good once over. The ones i decide to keep i edit to the best of my ability. I do plan to go back when i get the chance during a different part of the day to see what else that spot has to offer.

[mrteacherdude]

Originally Posted by Optikal iLLusion

This is helpful. Im still learning in PhotoShop as well. I really want to upgrade to CS5 from Elements. Mostly because when i go to, lets say youtube, to look up "how to" videos thats what everyone is using. The tools and drop down menus and panels dont always translate to Elements very easily.

Adobe TV: Learn Photoshop Elements 9. If you have a different version, they may have different series of videos available. Also, many of the later versions of Elements have similar core features.

Photoshop Elements User. A magazine/pay site, but they have some freebies.

Elements Village. A forum site; don't remember if I got anything useful there, but probably did. I tend to spend most of my available forum time at DPS

Photoshop Elements 9 for Dummies Cheat Sheet. May be useful, or not.

Everyday Elements. Don't remember if this one did anything for me...

The CoffeeShop Blog. I don't remember if I found this one useful either.

There are quite a few individual tutorials and such for Elements available out there in the inter-webs from sites other than YouTube. However, I did do a quick search for Elements Tutorials on YouTube and got what looks like a pretty decent list. I'm sure the video list could be queried in several different ways to yield more results.

There are also tutorials for specific effects or techniques available on this forum, you should be able to find them with the search function or browse the appropriate sections of the forum. Also, many of the basic core editing techniques that are shown in Photoshop can also be done in Elements.

Regarding your original post - the sun is too bright, my eye is drawn right to it and then I can't see anything else. Landscapes can be tough to shoot. Often what really looks interesting to us while we are there in the scene comes out looking just "blah" in a photo; our eyes and other senses take in and process way more information than the camera does and it can be quite difficult to convey that in a photo.

Most people who seriously shoot landscapes either shoot them early in the day or late in the day. While I don't know if I am very successful with shooting landscapes, one thing I find myself doing to try to make them more interesting is trying to shoot them from some sort of unusual or different perspective than the normal "standing in front of the scene" shot. I often find myself laying on the ground shooting up at an angle, standing on top of my vehicle or climbing a little bit up a hill and shooting downward, standing out in a lake, I think I've even layed on my back and shot behind me holding my camera upside down or with the camera laying on my chest. I don't know if any of this makes any difference, and sometimes probably is just silly, but it does cause me to see a scene differently and may cause me to capture it differently.

You may also look for interesting lines, contrasting colors, contrasting light, etc. There are also some pretty good sites, tutorials, etc about shooting landscapes. If memory serves me right, there is another forum here at DPS that deals just with landscape composition, but I'm not entirely sure about that.

[JryStone]

This is a very high contrast situation. I always shoot this situation with 3 bracketed exposures of 2 stops in camera RAW, then process in HDR. Sometimes I use the whole HDR image, but most often, just a portion as an overlay, then play with the opacity of the layers to get the image effect that I like. Give it a try.

[shruggy63]

Nice subject but TBH you seem slightly intent on messing it up? The composition is poor. You've not got in on your subject, you've exposed at the wrong end of the day for the right light & frankly it's a crap photo of a scene that could've been a nice shot.

[Krusty79]

Remember that your eye can see a much broader range from light to dark than your camera. Your eye can see at least 20 stops of light while your camera can only capture about 9. So, a scene that looks good to your eye may not translate well to a photo because of the dynamic range of the scene.

So that's why others have recommended bracketing your shots to do an exposure blend or HDR. A graduated neutral density filter can help in some of these situations as well, depending on how even the horizon is. These are all techniques to overcome the dynamic range issue all landscape photographers face.