Pond Reflections

Doug Solis

Both of these shots were taken in Willits Ca. on a medium sized pond. Other than a couple of ducks the pond was completely still, I went back the next day to try and recompose a shot but a very slight breeze virtually wiped out any reflection. The sun was just beginning to set on the right side of the pond.
Shot at f11, 1/60 ss at 24mm. I ran a gradient on both images in ACR along with sharpening and vibrance and saturation layers.

All CC appreciated

wolf911

2nd one looks really neat, so calm everything is

Doug Solis

Thanks Wolf

thapamd

I meant to comment on these earlier, but I got caught up with something else. Now I can get back to 'em

The blues and greens are amazing in these shots, and I love that mirror-like reflection. The only thing that bothers me a little is the amount of shadow detail visible. I think I can see too much shadow detail, and those areas look a bit "muddy." I also notice a little bit of halo at the bottom right of both images, where the reflections meet the blue water, another indication that perhaps a bit too much shadow recovery was applied or the radius of recovery was not wide enough. Most people probably won't notice these things, but I just wanted offer my observations as friendly criticism.

Doug Solis

Your comments are most helpful, I didn't even see the halos myself in the reflections. I'll rework the images and also try to increase in recovery radius.

Thanks Mahesh.

Hikin' Mike

I like both compositions, but I would also fix the halos, maybe clone some of the grass on the first image...but that's minor.

Doug Solis

I will do that thanks. I thought only HDR images got the halo effects.

Hikin' Mike

Frag Master wrote:

I will do that thanks. I thought only HDR images got the halo effects.

Did you blend two exposures using Layer Masks? Could be sharpening too. It's not bad though.

Doug Solis

Hikin' Mike wrote:

Did you blend two exposures using Layer Masks? Could be sharpening too. It's not bad though.

No just one exposure but I had cranked up sharpening to around 100 in ACR.

real gone

Here's one.

argyle

Doug Solis wrote:

No just one exposure but I had cranked up sharpening to around 100 in ACR.

I gave up on using ACR and Photoshop for my sharpening. You may want to take a look at a plug-in called "Photokit Sharpener"...offers three stages of sharpening (Capture Sharpen, Creative Sharpen, and Output Sharpen). A pro shooter friend of mine introduced me to this about a year or so ago and now that's all that I use. Not overly expensive either...less than $100 IIRC.