Urban Jungle View

kurzvorzwoelf

It's been some time since I could get my gear out and shoot some, but I finally managed to have some fun with the camera again during holidays.

The following is a single exposure of the Elisabeth's Bridge and the Pest side of Budapest, as seen on a beautiful day from the "jungle" somewhere up on the Gellert Hill on the Buda side.

Definitely this exposure pushes the dynamic range of my little OM-D to its limits. After processing (I was being light with it), it does look a little artificial to me, almost like a painting. Does it look too artifical? Comments and criticism are as always welcome!

WernerG

It does have the look of a painting or even a travel poster for the city. I rather like it that way. But it appears that there is enough room in the shadows to lower the entire exposure for the city and bring the darkest leaves back with a shadows slider. But, as is, it has an interesting and unique look.

kurzvorzwoelf

Thanks for your feedback, @WernerG.

Actually, I already did what you suggested on above frame - shadows slider is about at +88, exposure at -1.2. The original has very dark leaves, as I was standing in the shadows and shooting this shiny bright city spot.

Probably, it would have been wise to take a bracketed shot and merge them into a HDR picture, but it's always risky hand-held - even with the quite superb IS of the OM-D, my unsteady hands failed me more than once already...

Stumblebum

Its fantastic! The greens in the building at distance go nicely with green leaves in fg! Very bright mood!

As for processing, my best understanding is that we have to process each little area according to its need. You don't need to push global sliders. Even a radial filter or whatever that circular filter is in ligh room can be placed in super bright area and extract bit more details/darks.

Either-way, thoroughly enjoyable!

The lone twig up top, one not connected to anything, good candidate to zap!

Cheers m8!

Cornflake

I like it. If it were all as high-key as the background, I'd probably like it more.

kurzvorzwoelf

Thanks @Stumblebum and @Cornflake for your feedback!

I played a little with your suggestions Taz, using a circular local filter (I don't use Lightroom, but it's available in my Post-Software, too). I also zapped the lone branch at top - it's quite surprising how easy and well this works with modern software.

For the first, I just went down a little bit with brightness in the center, and I think that although the change is subtle, it actually works:

For the second, I added an inverted version of the first circular filter to additionally raise shadows on the leaves a little more:

Stumblebum

Sweet! Each monitor is calibrated differently (assuming they are calibrated in first place) so no one sees same image, but this is superb! We all missed the stub in left edge. Now that you made fg bright it is bit more prominent. I would consider zapping that as well! Cheers m8!

kurzvorzwoelf

@Stumblebum said:
Sweet! Each monitor is calibrated differently (assuming they are calibrated in first place) so no one sees same image, but this is superb! We all missed the stub in left edge. Now that you made fg bright it is bit more prominent. I would consider zapping that as well! Cheers m8!

zap and it's gone Thanks a lot for walking this through with me. Cheers!

Stumblebum

Sweet!