Field of Iris. Working with Sierra sunlight?

DRT-Maverick

I snapped this photograph earlier today. Problem was the sun was in the horizon that I was aiming my camera at.



Now I did some minor changes to the image - basically adjusted the CMYK curves and changed it back to RGB for web-saving, just corrected some of the colors and took some of the slight green tint out (it wasn't anything bad).

Now I'm trying to figure out though, I've seen similar photos, photos of fields of flowers with a sun (yeah I guess it's overdone but I'm not going for anything unique, I'm more trying to learn at the moment) where the sky isn't blown out white and has normal tint. How? :scratch

My only guess right now is filters, gradients. But I don't have that money...

Any suggestions? I forgot my tripod on this mission, well actually purposely left it at home just because this was a hike I'd never done yet, and I heard it was difficult (And it was)! Wanted to scope it out.

bryanj87

This is a nice scenic image!

Gradient filters would be one option. Depending on the brand you use, they may not be as pricey as you think. I use Hi-Techs, which are fairly reasonable (at least to me), although they do add a slight color cast.

Using a tripod and bracketing a series of shots for an HDR image would be another option.

If you shoot RAW, you could try to expose more for the sky and then bring back the foreground in post. However, that can be tricky and you may introduce a lot of noise.

I hope that helps.

NorthernFocus

I just love iris blooms. It's amazing how nature seems to link beauty and delicate/fragile forms. Or maybe we humans simply consider things more beautiful when we know their existence is fleeting

As already mentioned, a graduated ND filter is designed for exactly this situation and they aren't necessarily all that pricy. Given your contraints, i.e. no tripod and no filters, the best option may simply be to eliminate the horizon from the image. I forget who to credit with the axiom, but as he/she says, if it doesn't add to the image then it takes away. In this image the sky definately detracts from the image IMO. A simple crop, either in camera or PP may work wonders .

philiphutson

DRT-Maverick wrote:

I snapped this photograph earlier today. Problem was the sun was in the horizon that I was aiming my camera at.



Now I did some minor changes to the image - basically adjusted the CMYK curves and changed it back to RGB for web-saving, just corrected some of the colors and took some of the slight green tint out (it wasn't anything bad).

Now I'm trying to figure out though, I've seen similar photos, photos of fields of flowers with a sun (yeah I guess it's overdone but I'm not going for anything unique, I'm more trying to learn at the moment) where the sky isn't blown out white and has normal tint. How?

My only guess right now is filters, gradients. But I don't have that money...

Any suggestions? I forgot my tripod on this mission, well actually purposely left it at home just because this was a hike I'd never done yet, and I heard it was difficult (And it was)! Wanted to scope it out.

It looks like there is enough detail in the sky to do a 2 or 3 shot hdr from a raw file (as bryanj87 suggested). I would do a 2 image raw conversion hdr. Go back to the raw conversion and bring down the exposure by some where around 2 stops (this will be for your sky) then bring up the exposure by 1 shot (from the original as shot exposure). I still have not bought photomatix's hdr program I do my hdr with layers and layer masks.
If you didn't shoot in raw the original jpeg looks to have quite a bit detail in the sky. Use the quick mask and make a curves layer to bring down the sky.
If you don't know how to do any the above just yell and I can give you details.

-Philip

NWMtnGuy

Here's a couple of thoughts:

As previously mentioned ND grad filters are the traditional way to address this problem. Depending on brand they may not be as expensive as you think. At B&H Photo Cokin ND grad filters are about $30 each. You can spend a lot more on other brands (some very nice ones), but I know a lot of photographers who use Cokin ND grad filters and have some spectacular photos to show for it. In fact, when I'm traveling light (i.e. weeks at a time out of a daypack) I carry one ND grad filter - a Cokin 2-stop filter. If it gets lost or stolen I'm out $30, and with the extra adjustment latitude you get out of digital it's amazing how versatile a single 2-stop grad filter can be.

If you have a tripod you can take multiple exposures and create an HDR image using Photoshop (CS2 or CS3) or something like Photomatix. There are other programs out there too but I don't know them all. If you don't have a tripod use a beanbag, a sandbag, a sturdy rock, or anything else that will hold your camera in one spot. Most cameras will allow you to auto-bracket and shoot all three shots in succession automatically, so you can set the camera on something like a beanbag, hit the self timer, and let the camera do it's thing. There are some really nice websites that describe HDR technique. They're easy to find with Google.

You can also manually blend images. Shoot a couple of shots - one to expose for the shadows, one for the highlights, and maybe another in between for good measure. You can then blend these together in a program like photoshop. Again, there are quite a few good web sites that talk about how to do this, but as I recall Michael Reichmann at Luminous Landscape did a really nice writeup on this a couple of years back.

Hope that helps!
Dale