LPS #2 Take 2

tsk1979

The Golden Temple, highest seat of the Sikh Religion.
I think the night shot looks more stately.
I also think I went a tad overboard with sharpening, or is it okay?

Nikolai

tsk1979 wrote:

The Golden Temple, highest seat of the Sikh Religion.
I think the night shot looks more stately.
I also think I went a tad overboard with sharpening, or is it okay?

While I do think this target has a great potential, the both images seem overcrowded to my personal taste. I don't have any problems with sharpening or colors, but there are too many distractions IMHO.

I think this is a perfect example of "you need to get closer", don't you agree? Get really close, go wide angle, set to low vantage point (tripod!) - and your night shot can be really golden!

Good luck! Seems like you're onto something!

Swartzy

Shooting this in portrait mode
zoomed in a bit will give you the reflections and a bit of the surrounding areas without distractions. Make the golden temple the subject...up front and personal using the other specular highlights, including the water line reflection to your advantage. If you take it in landscape mode, then my suggestion would be the same concept....It's got lots of shine and would be easy to make it stately.

photogmomma

I agree with the others!

tsk1979

Thanks for the feedback
I can't go closer because of the lake, the only thing I can do now is take a tighter crop. Can't go there for a reshoot. Luckily I took many shots, and since they are 8MP cropping is not really a major issue at all.



I am posting couple of more shots with cropping, hope they look "more stately".
I have quite a few day shots too, but I feel night looks more stately.
1. Evening shot

2. Crop of the night shot posted

3. Another night shot

4. A wide panaromic shot

DRabbit

I think the original night shot is great... just a bit blown out. I bet this shot would totally rock right after sunset and not so overexposed. Not sure if you can get back there... if not, I'd go with the first night shot, just see if you can recover some of the highlights.

Nikolai

I know it may sound strange and contradicting (at least to what I said earlier), but I like the pano shot most of them all. #2 is also good.

I can't believe you didn't take any long exposure ones, even if only to smooth the reflection.. :hide

tsk1979

Nikolai wrote:

I know it may sound strange and contradicting (at least to what I said earlier), but I like the pano shot most of them all. #2 is also good.

I can't believe you didn't take any long exposure ones, even if only to smooth the reflection.. :hide

I did take long exposure ones. Even 3s shots were blown out at ISO 100 and F8. In hindsight I should have stopped down to F12, but I focussed more on taking shots from every conceivable angle(I took around 110 shots in RAW, 25 of them night ones).
In the heat of the moment I almost forgot that that if I could somehow take 15s of exposure, it would smooth out the reflections

pyroPrints.com

I like #1 from the second batch. Makes the palace look like it's made out of gold. Gorgeous.

tsk1979

pyroPrints.com wrote:

I like #1 from the second batch. Makes the palace look like it's made out of gold. Gorgeous.

It is made of gold .
I am gravitating more towards the panaroma, don't know why.

Swartzy

number one works but
Wanted to say that you've executed it well but I like the angle of the pana.....The whole shot says stately. That's my take...Really like the portrait mode of your first one...nice time of dusk, nice reflections and color. The pana though is more powerful.

Flyinggina

Beautiful subject. I like the pano best.

Virginia

salazar

I like the Pano best as well. It has an elegance that isn't coming through as well in the others. Out of curiosity, is there a little more image above that could be left in? It seems to me the crop to the top of the red towers (minarets?) to the right is a bit close. And how would it look if you selectively lightened those two towers very slightly and perhaps cloned out the thing between them that looks like a concrete water tower?

davev

The pano's good. But I think you need to knock down the highlights a little bit.

tsk1979

Redone, without water tower
Hi,
I tried to lighten the minarets, but couldn't, cloning out the water tower was successfull.

Nikolai

Uhm,

tsk1979 wrote:

Hi,
I tried to lighten the minarets, but couldn't, cloning out the water tower was successfull.

You forgot the reflection...

Also, I think if you can dim the reflections of all the top lights it would be much better, otherwise they simply act as very bright (and rather ugly, IMHO ) distraction points...

salazar

The minarets seem fine now that the water tower is gone. I see you added a little to the top now too, that seems better. Nikola is right about the reflections I think. Is your horizion straight? I'm not sure if it is a bit crooked or if there is a little lens distortion going on. Great shot, even better now!

tsk1979

I will crop the image from the bottom and clip of the lower reflections from the lights. I have another shot which is slightly tighter crop without the minarets, will post that too.
I tried playing around with curves but could not really "tone" down the image very well, will post my results soon.

Nikolai

Tanveer,

tsk1979 wrote:

I will crop the image from the bottom and clip of the lower reflections from the lights. I have another shot which is slightly tighter crop without the minarets, will post that too.
I tried playing around with curves but could not really "tone" down the image very well, will post my results soon.

Don't crop! Just dim them , and clone out the tower reflection.

salazar

Nikolai wrote:

Don't crop! Just dim them , and clone out the tower reflection.

I'm with Nik on this, you don't want to crop any of the bottom away, just dim the bright white reflections down a bit and get rid of the reflection of the water tower.

tsk1979

Tries..
Tried toning down the highlights, and also did a crop. Removed the water towr reflections too.
Light reflections cropped :

Highlights toning:

Nikolai

tsk1979 wrote:

Tried toning down the highlights, and also did a crop. Removed the water towr reflections too.
Light reflections cropped :

Highlights toning:

1. Crop - no! (at least not this one. Maybe try a bolder one, just to leave enough body of water to show some reflection. But in general reflection is good)
2. Water tower reflection cloning - yes!
3. Dimming - not enough, IMHO. I would put a layer of nudged water above them and set the trasparency to make them barely visible...

BTW, it still looks a bit skewed. I would probably use Free Transform or some other keystoning removal tool to eliminate the feeling.

HTH

tsk1979

Nikolai wrote:

1. Crop - no! (at least not this one. Maybe try a bolder one, just to leave enough body of water to show some reflection. But in general reflection is good)
2. Water tower reflection cloning - yes!
3. Dimming - not enough, IMHO. I would put a layer of nudged water above them and set the trasparency to make them barely visible...

BTW, it still looks a bit skewed. I would probably use Free Transform or some other keystoning removal tool to eliminate the feeling.

HTH

1. I tried to tilt it left and right, this looks the best angle. Free transform.. will try that. I think Photoshop has that.
2. Nudge water over .. French for me, and I don't know french . Could you elaborate... some link to tutorial.

I think these two and I will be done . BTW I have posted in the whipping section too, lets see what happens.

Nikolai

tsk1979 wrote:

1. I tried to tilt it left and right, this looks the best angle. Free transform.. will try that. I think Photoshop has that.
2. Nudge water over .. French for me, and I don't know french . Could you elaborate... some link to tutorial.

I think these two and I will be done . BTW I have posted in the whipping section too, lets see what happens.

Uhm, it is all Photoshop-French... I can't think of any particular links or place.

I mean:

1. copy layer, set mode to luminosity
2. make it 50% transparent
3. Move it a bit (this is called nudge:-) left or right so you can see the water on the top layer is covering the bright reflections
4. While having the top layer selected Alt-click the Mask button
5. Select white small soft brush and paint loosely over the bright reflection
6. Reset opacity to 100%
7. Adjusting brush color and size, refine the mask
8. Now set the opacity to the value at which it works the best

Something like that. It's way faster to do than to describe..:-)

tsk1979

Finally

salazar

Very nice.

Flyinggina

Very nice, indeed. Nice work and great support help from fellow dGriners, don't you think.thumb I'm very impressed with both.

Virginia

tsk1979

Thanks everyone It really helped. I learnt a lot of things in post processing.
I plan to do something else too, I will take -2 -1 0 +1 +2 from RAW and blend all the exposures. Lets see how HDR works out!
Got time till sunday!

tsk1979

Confused again
Got feedback from the whipping post and few friends. They love the pano shot, but it does not really say stately to some. Most people think that the closeup shot is more stately provided I can reduce the clutter of background buildings.
So thats precisely what I have done using the clone brush, and I think that this could be the shot I am going to enter.
Please give your valuable feedback once again.

pyroPrints.com

First one, no doubt. I like the close up shot more anyhow =c)

Flyinggina

Of the two, definitely the first. I still prefer the pano, tho. :hide

Which do you like best? I'd go with the one that you think is the very best photograph of the lot. The one you would hang on your wall. All of the versions illustrate stately so trying to match up with the theme should not be the final criteria, IMHO (which, I confess, is worth less than 2 cents). In the end it is up to you. Whatever you choose it will be a photo to be proud of. Good luck!

Virginia