hazzard rock

danny d

one of my favorite places to photograph (as well as just to relax and clear my head!) Would be interested in printing/framing a large print for my rec room. This is expensive, so I would like to learn how to improve the composition/color/post processing/ etc, etc prior to moving forward.

thank you for your input

mmroden

(announcer's voice)
Looks like the boys have gotten themselves into a heap of trouble again, with Boss Hog after 'em and Daisy angry at Bo for somethin' or other. I bet they're gonna come through though.
(end cheesy announcer's voice)

Sorry, sorry, just the first thing that came to mind.

Looks like you've blown the highlights in the clouds. Did you shoot raw? Can you recover them? It's a difficult scene, because you also have the back of the rock in the lower left...

danny d

Thanks for the input. I did shoot raw so I can try to compensate for that. However, in the future do you think under exposing with some fill flash aimed at the rocks would help ?

mmroden

That would be tricky, and the real answer is I don't know. I think you could probably try bracketed exposures, and then choose the wave you like best for the ocean part (the ocean moves too fast for most bracketed expsosures, I find). In my dreams, there's a huge dynamic range camera for just this kind of shot.

Another possibility could be a graduated ND filter. That would bring the clouds in more of the same exposure as the rocks, so it could all fit in a raw exposure. I'm not too experienced with that kind of filter, though, so I'm just guessing here.

I also don't know if fill flash would work, or how that would look. For such a landscape, I'm tempted to say no, it won't, because only the foreground rocks will get the exposures but further rocks won't, so it would look odd. But someone with more experience with that kind of lighting technique might chime in.

LiquidAir

If you bracket (carefully) on a tripod, you can simulate ND filters in Photoshop by layering the bracketed shots. That works for static scenes but it might prove troublesome here depending on how fast the clouds are moving. A gradient ND bringing the top right of the image down a stop might be the right answer.

danny d

nd filter
I really appreciate the advise so far! Nd filter... I recently purchased (yesterday) the 10-22 ef-s. I will look into filters. Thanks!

Anything other than blown highlights in the clouds that can be commented on?

Thanks again!

AZsnapper

Image
Perhaps merge 3 images together. One would be the sky, one the ocean, and the other the rocks, using traditional layer masking. This would also solve the problem of merging the moving ocean. Probably would take a couple of hours, but the lines are solid enough to be able to make clean masks.

danny d wrote:

I really appreciate the advise so far! Nd filter... I recently purchased (yesterday) the 10-22 ef-s. I will look into filters. Thanks!

Anything other than blown highlights in the clouds that can be commented on?

Thanks again!

douglas

If you have a decent printer and aren't ready to spend the money to have a large print you might want to try to print it yourself. Slice it into 4 pics add interpolation and print 4 8x10's. I have done this before with only a 5 MP camera and the results were alot better than i expected. Im getting a 10MP camera monday Im sure the results will be even better.

SloYerRoll

Hey Danny, Even though all the posts here are valid points. I think you need to go down a different path before you worry about RAW, HDR, or ND. The letters you need to look into are CM (Color Management) this in a nutshell is how all the different digital equipment you are using to interprets colors.

A mental picture of color management in action: send the exact same shot to 3 different printers. I guarantee all three prints will come out different unless they have managed color spaces, then the shots will look almost identical.
Here is a toned down link to some information on color management. This link is to get you started, not a definitive answer to color spaces.
Just bookmark this link and take a look when you have a bit of time to really review the contents. Even the easy side of color management can seem quite intimidating. Once you get the concept, it's not as bad as it seems.

Once you have a successful CM setup for ALL the digital gear your shot is going to go through. Post a thread in the The Big Picture asking how to send a shot to a lab to be printed. It's a fairly easy process, but way off topic for this thread.

Allot of people micro manage color spaces. I don't think this is necessary though; unless you are shooting corporate identites for mass production and the colors HAVE TO match. Horseshoes, hand grenades, and color spaces for the most part can be "close enough" and you sill still have good results.

Hope this helped a bit.