First Attempt at HDR

[meetshany]

Hi,

My first attempt at HDR. Please critique on the composition and processing. I like real looking photos and my HDRs are lookinh unreal. How to acheive ral looking HDR using QTPFSGUI?

I used three photos, -2, 0, +2 to create the following HDR.

[IMG][/IMG]

I created two HDRs, the other one is:
The clouds were Ruling the skies on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Please critique.

[windrider86]

To be honest, I dont like the clouds at all. They just look to be an unnatural blue and too soft. For my taste anyway
I do like the boats bit would like to see a tad bit more room on the bottom and the boat on the right could use a little bit of lightening up.
You can always use layers/masks to work on your images. During your processing if you want the boats to be bright but you want the sky to be left alone, just adjust everything to the point of where you want the boats to be and then erase/mask off the sky so the sky will be left more natural

[Jamfke]

I kind of like this. It looks more like a water color painting than a photo. The composition looks good to me.

[meetshany]

windrider86, Jamfke,
Thanks for taking time to comments.
I will try a new HDR with the same set of photos... Thanks again.

[Benphall]

The colors are great! however there appears to be some movement in the clouds from the multiple exposures. mabey crop out a bit of the top of the photograph. As for the other picture " the clouds were ruleing the sky" WOW I LOVE VERYTHING ABOUT IT. Great job keep up with the HDR

[arlon]

How much time did you take between shots? I use the three shot auto bracket mode and high speed continuous shutter. I had a heck of a time getting the shots off fast enough with my old D50. I don't know what you are using for a camera but if it doesn't have auto bracketing and a pretty fast shutter, clouds are always going to present a problem.

Might try cloning the clouds out of the worst exposed shots and just leave them in on the best shot then combine them again..

[FormElement]

I found a fantastic resource on image blending. This method now accounts for almost 90% pf the images I process via HDR. For me it's mostly applicable to architectural interiors, which absolutely have to look dead natural, and almost always have 4-10 stops of ambient lighting that I cannot control.

Tony Kuyper Photography—Hand-Blending High Dynamic Range Using Luminosity Masks

Tony Kuiper really has shared a wealth of information on light and blending. Once you understand the luminance masks, and what they do, it totally opens up the way you see an image.