Anzac Sunset in HDR - C&C requested

Alpha_Plus

Anzac Day is a public holiday for Australia and New Zealand. It is commemorated by both countries on 25 April every year to honour those who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during the first world war. The acronym is for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps and marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces.

These days it is more general and commemorates all those who died and served in military operations for their countries. — Read more on Wikipedia

During the Anzac Day services, 'The Ode to Remembrance' is often cited and reads:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

I looked outside at about sunset and noticed there was a bit of colour showing so I rushed down to the lake and snapped an Anzac Sunset. Please Critique - let me know what you don't like or how I could make it better.

The first two are in HDR that went through Photomatix, PS, and Aperture.





This image is a 3x2 shot vertical panorama. I liked it, but the horizon didn't stitch horizontal. Could someone give me some comments / ideas on how to keep it straight when it goes through PS??

Sam

While all three are done very nicely, number one is my favorite.

If I had any suggestion it would be try cropping off the bottom so the shore line isn't dead center, but I do like the processing.

Sam

schmoo

Karl I love these! The clouds are so dramatic, and I think the last one is my favorite because it looks that much more sweeping after you stitched together the whole scene.

I've not had much issue personally with horizons not staying put in PS - I usually have the opposite issue of keeping the edges of the scene straight. So I'm not much help I'm afraid. What version of PS are you using? Could you possible use one of the distortion tools to "push" the horizon back in place?

Alpha_Plus

Sam wrote:

While all three are done very nicely, number one is my favorite.

If I had any suggestion it would be try cropping off the bottom so the shore line isn't dead center, but I do like the processing.

Sam

Thanks Sam, I do like number one too, however, I put the horizon in the middle to get as much reflection as I could of the colour in the clouds.

schmoo wrote:

Karl I love these! The clouds are so dramatic, and I think the last one is my favorite because it looks that much more sweeping after you stitched together the whole scene.

I've not had much issue personally with horizons not staying put in PS - I usually have the opposite issue of keeping the edges of the scene straight. So I'm not much help I'm afraid. What version of PS are you using? Could you possible use one of the distortion tools to "push" the horizon back in place?

Thanks Schmoo. I should have thought about the pano when I took the first shot. With the light from the first one, the wider angle composition would have been good.

Perhaps I need to be more careful keeping my camera level when shooting a stitch job. I've got CS4 so there may be a possibility of correcting it. I'll look into it.