Swiss Landscapes

[cwaddell88]

I just got Adobe Lightroom and have been playing around with it with some recent photos I've taken - just wanted to get some feedback on them. This is my first post and will try and attach the photos on here later, but have added links to them for now.

Isolation by ~cwaddell on deviantART
Swiss Panorama by ~cwaddell on deviantART

The first one I may have overdone a bit but I liked the way it came out - the original photo was very faint (can try and upload a before/after pic of it if anyone wants to see).

The second picture is a panorama made of 8 photos - want to fix a few parts but also really like the way it came out.

Does anyone have comments on them or how I could improve on them in future?

[plangereis]

I like the photos, although the first one is a bit too contrasty for my taste, but that is my problem. The panorama is great! The only thing I find a little disconcerting is the way the one building in the foreground is on a real slope. Was that the way it was situated? Was this a result of a really wide lens being used to capture your images? Overall, though nice shots in terms of composition.

[cwaddell88]

The building in the panorama was on a slope and looked pretty much like that in the original picture but realised after looking at it again it got tilted a bit more when I was adjusting the panoramic shot.

I will try and see if I can fix that - there were a few other parts I want to work on too (trees on right and top of hills on the left).

I think I am going back there again soon so will try and get another panoramic shot with more photos.

[emtab]

I also like the photos.
You mentioned that you used Lightroom. Just wanted to ask, on the first one, did you vignette, boost clarity and use the cold tone preset?

For the panoramic, not sure what stitcher you're using but it could be doing a cylinidrical rather than rectilinear panorama and that's whats giving you the distortion on the edge.

regards,
emtab

[lurw]

I like the panorama more than the "Isolation" picture. I think you have done a better job concerning composition when you did the Panorama-shot. The Isolation-shot is a little bit too narrow, I think this image would be better if you had chosen a slightly wider angle.
But anyway, the colours and contrasts are very well chosen in both pictures!

[cwaddell88]

For the first one I think I put the clarity near 100% - I did vignette a bit but also used the graduated filter on the top and bottom right. Can't remember everything I did to it but think I desaturated a few of the colours.

For the panorama I used the Photomerge in Photoshop just on the automatic setting - then used the transform tool.

[cwaddell88]

Here is the before and after picture for the 'Isolation' one.

I wasn't able to get the picture coming out much better in the camera - tried a few settings but it kept coming out quite faded, though I think it was probably because of the sun's position.

Have mainly been using the automatic settings until recently and still trying to learn how to use all the other (manual) ones properly - so if anyone knows how to improve it without having to edit afterwards it would be helpful.