Whats the truth behind shots like this

[loki1982]

I have never had any photography classes. I just bought a high end digital SLR and Im learning all the ins and outs about shutter/apature/dof/iso speeds etc. I have taken a few shots of really great sky pictures, sunsets with pinks/greens/blues etc. None of them come out near as brilliant as I seem them. I edit them in photoshop and make them look better and Im proud of a few of my shots so far. But when I see a shot like this I cant help but wonder how its done. Is this picture mostly about editing, or mostly about the actual shot. There is no way I could ever make any of my shots looks anything like this.

Line of Fire by *Solkku on deviantART

[Elmo]

Do not put yourself down, you can do it it just takes time to learn.

[arlon]

It looks like it was shot with a slow shutter, maybe an ND and or polarizer filter. RAW mentioned in the description makes me think it's been tone mapped in photomatix or some similar HDR program that gives a lot of control of color saturation. Very likely a multi image HDR.

There is a book on HDR that has a lot of shots like that called Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography by Ferrell McCollough. It's about $15 on amazon and worth the money if you are interested in that type of thing. I just got it a recently and I'm working my way through it now.

I've done very few sunset HDR shots but the few I have done have a similar look. I'm sure that took a lot of fiddling..

One of my HDR sunsets HERE and one more HERE.

[loki1982]

Thanks.

I have tried to do some hdr photographs and were not impressed with my results so far. I set my camera to -2,0,+2 ev used tripod and took an everyday normal shot of our backyard. There is a ton of trees,a pond,flowers etc and thought it would be a nice test. Imported the files into photoshop cs4 and merged them and played around a while. I felt the normal 0ev photo was as good or better than the merged. I guess I didnt do things right or something.

[VegasMike]

Give it a little time and read up on this site. That image you linked to looks like a heavily processed HDR image and they really are not that difficult to do. There is a good HDR tutorial on DPS as well as other sites if that's the type of images you are interested in.

[arlon]

This one that I linked above was a 3 shot HDR +2, 0, -2. Not perfect but it came out ok. But I didn't shoot it in the back yard either.

Shooting a shot in the back yard and deciding HDR doesn't work is not going to get you where you're trying to go. Best suggestion to get "cool" hdr is to go shoot a picture of a "cool" subject. The back yard isn't going to cut it (at least not most backyards). (-:}

HDR by definition is intended for applications where the tone/light ranges can't be captured in a single image. You need a subject where the tones run from dead black to totally blown out on the 0 EV shot. That kind of light environment will show what HDR can do. Unless that shot at 0 EV in your yard had black shadows and totally blown highlights, it wasn't much of a test in my opinion.


I don't know about cs4 I use Photomatix and Elements 5..

[loki1982]

Originally Posted by arlon

This one that I linked above was a 3 shot HDR +2, 0, -2. Not perfect but it came out ok. But I didn't shoot it in the back yard either.

Shooting a shot in the back yard and deciding HDR doesn't work is not going to get you where you're trying to go. Best suggestion to get "cool" hdr is to go shoot a picture of a "cool" subject. The back yard isn't going to cut it. (-:}

I don't know about cs4 I use Photomatix and Elements 5..

I understand that. Your right. I was more just choosing the backyard because it was my first test to see if I even had the ability to follow all the way through the process.

Here is a sky shot I did last week.

Summer Road by ~loki1982 on deviantART

I went alittle overboard on photoshop saturation and hue.

[arlon]

In that shot you also didn't catch enough tone range like the shot you are interested in. That shot in your original post has a lot of range in it. Yours look a little limited in tone range. Almost looks like you are using .jpg to make the HDR image? I do mine with RAW files. If I do a .JPG, I'd shoot RAW, and make a few exposures above +2, and a few below -2 to use in the stack. You get about the same tone range in a +2,0, -2 RAW stack as you'll get from a -4, -2, 0, +2, +4 .jpg stack.

If I'm being too simple, maybe some lurker will be getting some useful info.. (-:}

[loki1982]

No i really appreciate your advice. That picture was shot in jpg and not HDR it was a single shoot. I wasnt trying HDR at that time. It was a spur of the moment shot. I was driving with my camera and the sun started to go down, I just pulled over and shot it really quick.

I really appreciate anything you tell me because I am still learning alot. Im going through tutorials and youtube videos and trying new things on each trip I make out.

[Nicole]

They also used 2 graduated ND filters (from the description). A 1 stop and a 3 stop. I'm not sure if they stacked them or used one for the bottom of the shot and one for the top, but I'm betting that would go a long ways toward getting that effect.