Cold & Winding Road

TheReal7

I have driven this road many times and every time I wanted to take a photo of this spot. The challenge is that there is no shoulder to park or pull over and if you did, you would most likely get hit by another vehicle since they would not be able to see you in time. Well, I decided it was finally time to take this photo so I pulled over far enough away where my car wouldn't get hit and then walked to this spot. I wish the conditions would have been better for a more interesting photo but I don't mind how this one turned out.



:cool

Joe Dukovac

Hey Scott,

I haven't really posted anything in the landscape section because I mainly do portraits, but I had to for this one. The first thing that hits me is the road. The beautiful "S" curve just leads my eye right through your photo, so composition wise, it works great for me.

The shadow sides of the hills are pretty blueish in tint. Have you tried to increase the warmth of the photo to see if that can be changed slightly? The other colours are very nice.

Overall I really like it a lot, and would probably print it out on a nice metallic print and frame it. I love winter so this is right up my alley. Did you by any chance do this as an HDR photo?

Thanks,
Joe

TheReal7

Joe Dukovac wrote:

Hey Scott,

I haven't really posted anything in the landscape section because I mainly do portraits, but I had to for this one. The first thing that hits me is the road. The beautiful "S" curve just leads my eye right through your photo, so composition wise, it works great for me.

The shadow sides of the hills are pretty blueish in tint. Have you tried to increase the warmth of the photo to see if that can be changed slightly? The other colours are very nice.

Overall I really like it a lot, and would probably print it out on a nice metallic print and frame it. I love winter so this is right up my alley. Did you by any chance do this as an HDR photo?

Thanks,
Joe

Thank you Joe. I did a quick edit at work and didn't notice the blue cast. Lighting is pretty bad here. I've fixed the blue tint and agree it works better.

There is more interesting aspects to this spot that I plan to return and get a much better capture. Just didn't feel like climbing a big hill that day

mtully

Scott,

I've been enjoying your amazing images. Is this an HDR stack like your other work? I'm a hobbyist from way back that has been re-energized by HDR techniques and have been experimenting for the past several months. I find your images to be among the best of their type anywhere.

One thing I have noticed in my source images is that the color temp shifts toward cold as the exposures get shorter. This is most appearent in photos like this with snow. I don't know if this is an artifact of my el cheapo camera or of digital photography in general. What I have begun to do on shots containing snow or foaming water is to adjust the color temp as I open each successive image. I find that I have to increase the temp as the images trend dark. If I do not do this to the source images, then I can remove color cast in the final image, but this can cause the more brightly lit areas to shift overly warm.

Another thing that I have found is that if the sky is overcast and featureless, then the overall lighting is so even that there is no advantage to the whole process. The best aspect of HDR for me is to add a properly exposed sky to a landscape. I can make a better image in the case of a flat overcast sky by taking a single image from the center of the bracketed sequence and doing traditional post processing. Much less noise and odd artifacts to deal with.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work. Please visit the same spot when the sky is more willing.

TheReal7

mtully wrote:

Scott,

I've been enjoying your amazing images. Is this an HDR stack like your other work? I'm a hobbyist from way back that has been re-energized by HDR techniques and have been experimenting for the past several months. I find your images to be among the best of their type anywhere.

One thing I have noticed in my source images is that the color temp shifts toward cold as the exposures get shorter. This is most appearent in photos like this with snow. I don't know if this is an artifact of my el cheapo camera or of digital photography in general. What I have begun to do on shots containing snow or foaming water is to adjust the color temp as I open each successive image. I find that I have to increase the temp as the images trend dark. If I do not do this to the source images, then I can remove color cast in the final image, but this can cause the more brightly lit areas to shift overly warm.

Another thing that I have found is that if the sky is overcast and featureless, then the overall lighting is so even that there is no advantage to the whole process. The best aspect of HDR for me is to add a properly exposed sky to a landscape. I can make a better image in the case of a flat overcast sky by taking a single image from the center of the bracketed sequence and doing traditional post processing. Much less noise and odd artifacts to deal with.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work. Please visit the same spot when the sky is more willing.

Thank you very much. This was a single exposure no HDR.

What I like about HDR is it allows me to capture a scene as I saw it. Not how the camera and it's limitations see it. IMO, HDR is necessary in a lot of situations that I shoot. Some will say all you need are GND filters. In some cases this is true but IMO very limited. I've seen some very nice shots done with GNDs when there is a flat horizon and nothing protruding into where the GND is filtering. I am very picky when it comes to blown highlights and shadows and also noise. When I see a scene shot with GNDs that have something like a mountain or tree that turns almost black due to the GND filter, I am turned off. Just a personal taste. I think this is the main reason I have dumped a few hundred into GND filters yet.

As for color shifts, my experience is that the longer the exposure, the more saturation happens. This is more noticeable when using ND to get longer exposures. This may explain what issues you're dealing with.