New to Digital Grin and 'hello' to everybody. Already amazed and awed by the photography on this site as well as the support and sense of community.

First post from a recent trip to Oahu. Your comments and critique are welcomed and encouraged!

Have been shooting a lot of HDR recently and still honing my post-processing skills. I'm worried about the color settings on my display as some early feedback from friends and family is that some of my photos (see my SmugMug site at: http://rmichaeldavisphotography.smugmug.com/) are too saturated.

Again, your feedback is GREATLY appreciated! Thank you.

For me, it is an interesting and cool looking result. A PP style for landscapes or most anything else, I haven't tried much of yet. But there is definitely an appeal to do so. This one is pretty heavy with the style. Not a bad thing depending on ones tastes. Something for me to chew on for awhile.

If you are going for an effect where you leave the viewer off balance because they can't figure out what they are looking at, then you've achieved it.

Sorry to be so sarcastic, but i can't tell if I'm looking at salt encrusted sand, sand over basalt, or an oil spill on a beach and it bugs the hell out of me. If that is what you wanted....

Some of that may have come from attaching your image instead of linking to an image on your smugmug site, but as it is now, it's overprocessed to point of obscuring the image.

Hey Michael,

I'll only use half of the C&C you requested.


Comments:

IMHO, make images that YOU like. Don't let others try to put your images into THEIR box, unless that's what you want...

Take it all with a grain of salt. It's pretty easy to tell when someone is offering helpful input, or a condescending attempt to stifle your creativity if it's not consistent to what "they" like. (Generalization)


Keep experimenting!

Have fun!

Originally Posted by kolibri If you are going for an effect where you leave the viewer off balance because they can't figure out what they are looking at, then you've achieved it. Sorry to be so sarcastic, but i can't tell if I'm looking at salt encrusted sand, sand over basalt, or an oil spill on a beach and it bugs the hell out of me. If that is what you wanted.... Some of that may have come from attaching your image instead of linking to an image on your smugmug site, but as it is now, it's overprocessed to point of obscuring the image.

@kolibri: Thank you for the straight talk and my apologies for 'bugging the hell out of you'. My intent was to focus the viewer's attention on the sunrise and I agree with you point about the foreground leaving the viewer off balance...a crop would probably help here. Would you be so kind as to walk me through linking to an image on my SmugMug site (versus attaching the image)? I'm somewhat of a dolt and can't figure it out...

Originally Posted by rmichaeldavis @kolibri: Thank you for the straight talk and my apologies for 'bugging the hell out of you'. My intent was to focus the viewer's attention on the sunrise and I agree with you point about the foreground leaving the viewer off balance...a crop would probably help here. Would you be so kind as to walk me through linking to an image on my SmugMug site (versus attaching the image)? I'm somewhat of a dolt and can't figure it out...

1st get the address from smugmug:

Gallery view : Share : Get a link: Copy

2nd embed it in your post surrounded by IMG tags

{IMG} htp://et etc etc {/IMG} but with square brackets instead of braces

or click the yellow sky mountain icon in the bar above the message window and paste the link address there, overwriting the default http:// that automatically comes in the dialog box

HDR and color saturation are tools, and they have their places. There's a poster here who does great industrial HDR shots, SimpsonsBros or something like that. I'll use HDR if I can't control shooting conditions or if there is a huge dynamic range in an image, and have to try to recover a landscape shot, but I have yet to see a properly exposed landscape shot that is improved by heavy handed tonemapping. I'd like to see your original image for this shot.

I like the concept and the colors in this image, but I think the blending process softened the image too much. I'd like to see a larger version, but the trees on the right seem especially soft. You could probably run through your HDR software again a little differently and see if you can sharpen it up. I'm sure you had it in focus, so it must be a processing issue. Lighting and color is great though!