Pacific Sunrise...Hand Blended HDR

hawkeye978

I'm starting to try to hand blend more of my three exposure HDR shots. You definitely get a different feel to the picture, not quite as processed. Even with a more realistic Photomatix Tone Mapping.

This is a three exposure blending by hand. Used luminosity masking to generate the blended image then various curves, dodging, and burning to get the final image. I really like the way the sky turned out, much different than my Photomatix result.

This is a 6 sec exposure at f/11 and ISO 100.

C&C always welcome.



Others here along with comparison picture.

Tango

Tom, color looks very rich. I really like the shadows & darkness mixed with brighter sections in the FG. Your processing looks great to me! And I really get a kick out of the glow in the clouds!

There are a few things that seem like you can change maybe the next round ( if you re-shoot this comp). The way you have lined up the FG peak with the land mass in the BG on the right meet up and to me distracts a little, without being there myself I would try to bring the FG peak higher in the frame or move to the right to disconnect them... all imo...

eitherway, very nice image.

hawkeye978

Thanks, Aaron.

Lately I've been experimenting with working with the shadows rather than fighting to just nuke them. I'm trying to bring in just enough detail so that you can see what's in there without strongly increasing the exposure.

I see you point on the separation at the top. I went back and looked at that one and others and realized that there was a fair amount of fog on the far side of the harbor that hadn't burned off yet. In fact that background ridge continues all the way across the shot to the left but is masked in the fog in this frame. You can make it out a little better here...



Thanks again, love the shots from Monument Valley.

chrismoore

Hi Hawkeye, I like the glow in the sky in the first shot, it must have been something to witness. I would bump the reds down just a tad, though. In the second image you posted I like the sky, my only critiques would be that the water has a bluish hue to it, which you may or may not have intended, and the bright spot on the rock lower left seems a little out of place with the available light, I might darken that a bit. Great job

hawkeye978

chrismoore wrote: »

Hi Hawkeye, I like the glow in the sky in the first shot, it must have been something to witness. I would bump the reds down just a tad, though. In the second image you posted I like the sky, my only critiques would be that the water has a bluish hue to it, which you may or may not have intended, and the bright spot on the rock lower left seems a little out of place with the available light, I might darken that a bit. Great job

Chris,

I think you're right on the reds. I'll go try a version where I pull them back a little in Lightroom.

It was quite a morning. It went from nothing to that in the course of about 5 minutes. I had some shots where I was set up to shoot away from the sun because there wasn't much going on and happened to look over my should to beautiful blues and reds.

On the second, I actually have a version where I tone down the rocks and adjust the white balance slightly. That was a Photomatix preprocess and it's part of the reason I'm learning to hand blend. I'm starting to see the unnatural lighting from the contrast enhancement in the tone mapping.

Thanks again.

Doug Solis

Really lovely photo, although I agree with the others to try and desaturate the reds a bit. I'm finding I much prefer hand blending to Photomatix for the reason you stated it creates unrealistic highlights at times. Let me ask you this; In your image the foreground slab rock looks great and there is also some detail showing in the rocks on the right but it favors the center right vertical rocks, I'm going to assume you may have dodged these, should they all have been dodged or would it be more likely these would have been sihouetted from the sun?

hawkeye978

Doug Solis wrote: »

Really lovely photo, although I agree with the others to try and desaturate the reds a bit. I'm finding I much prefer hand blending to Photomatix for the reason you stated it creates unrealistic highlights at times. Let me ask you this; In your image the foreground slab rock looks great and there is also some detail showing in the rocks on the right but it favors the center right vertical rocks, I'm going to assume you may have dodged these, should they all have been dodged or would it be more likely these would have been sihouetted from the sun?

Doug,

You're right, the right side verticals were burned some because there was color in there I wanted to bring out. Everything was burned to some extent to bring out some shadow detail but the center right a little more. They also were slight brighter to begin with.

Thanks for the comment.

PhotoByLeal

hawkeye978 wrote: »

Thanks, Aaron.

Lately I've been experimenting with working with the shadows rather than fighting to just nuke them. I'm trying to bring in just enough detail so that you can see what's in there without strongly increasing the exposure.

I see you point on the separation at the top. I went back and looked at that one and others and realized that there was a fair amount of fog on the far side of the harbor that hadn't burned off yet. In fact that background ridge continues all the way across the shot to the left but is masked in the fog in this frame. You can make it out a little better here...



Thanks again, love the shots from Monument Valley.

awesome shot!