My last sunset on my week-long fall cypress tour. Windy as hell. This was one of the only areas with leaves still on the trees so I made the most of it. This one tree called to me because of the way it stood out from the darkened bank of trees behind it.
Specific Feedback Requested
So this is an attempt at sky replacement. I’ve fiddled with it several times and think this is the best iteration I have done yet. The sky is my own. Since I’ve been looking at it forever I can’t tell if it looks natural or not. Thoughts??
Technical Details
Is this a composite: Yes
Lumix G9
Lumix G Vario 35-100mm f/2.8 @ 85mm (170mm equiv.)
f/7.1 | 1/200 sec | ISO 200
Handheld in the kayak during what passed for a lull in the wind
Lr processed for general exposure, clarity and sharpness. Dodged and burned in the highlights in the trees. Brought into Ps for that sky replacement deal. Worked it pretty hard in terms of edge placement and fade, scale and brightness, temperature adjustment & control around the tree branches. Oy vey it’s harder than it looks. But the real sky was a flat nothing. I can post it for comparison if you like.
Kris, I like the shot with the sun making the one tree stand out. The sky looks good to me with the sun shining in the proper direction on the wispy clouds.
This is a pretty good job of sky replacement. I have very little experience with but when I tried it there was a particular issue. When you look at the sky with clouds you are looking at clouds from near to far. Their shapes should look big at the top of the image and get smaller and smaller towards the horizon. If they don’t then you’ve got a fake sky. Most people don’t notice this when they first look at an image. So the lesson is to replace a sky from horizon forward with another sky that’s the same. Don’t know if that makes sense. The problem with such a replacement is that it gives you little wiggle room at the horizon level where the boundary lies.
Thanks guys.
I spent a fair amount of time choosing the right sky, but maybe I could go lower on the horizon for the stitch. Problem is that the clouds were super dramatic down there and I thought it would overwhelm the trees and not match the water. You can bring some color into the water to match, but since there was a good bit of blue sky overhead at the time, I didn’t want to mess with it too much. Sigh. Why can’t Mother Nature just give us what we want in the first place? Lol.
I agree, that looks like a pretty good job of sky replacement from a technical standpoint. You avoided halos and maintained contrast in the trees and leaves, and that is not easy to do. You also got the luminosity of the sky looking correct where it it seen peeking through the gaps in the trees on the left edge. The other thing to pay attention to is the direction of light, and the White Balance in the sky relative to the land. The sky and landscape need to be consistent in regards to these two things, and I think you have accomplished that here. I assume you used Photoshop Select and Mask to get these edges blended? If not, you may want to give that a try, it certainly makes it a lot easier to do when you haves trees and leaves like this. Personally, I don’t do sky replacements myself, but I’m okay with other people doing it as long as they disclose the technique. However, I do a lot of blending of bracketed exposures for dynamic range, so I am familiar with the technical challenges involved.
From a composition standpoint I have a couple comments. Nitpick - I would have moved a bit to the right, or gotten closer to the tree to eliminate/reduce the merger of some of the tree branches with the background trees (especially on the right side). Subjective personal taste - I would crop a small slice off the bottom edge.
Thanks Ed. I worked this image so hard w/the sky replacement. I only used the tool set in that panel and I’m so happy that it doesn’t scream fake.
Funny, I think I may have started off more to the left for this one and the wind blew me sideways. This was one of the sharpest images despite the wind. Eventually when the light was gone, I ended up way out of scene to the right against some plants. I just laughed. You have to when the wind commandeers your boat.
Thanks. I hope my next 36 years of photography are even more productive than my last 36 years. Being part of this more thoughtful community is new and so different from the “likes oriented” venues elsewhere. It’s important for me now because I feel my progress has plateaued even as my approach to my work has changed. What I needed, and seem to have found here, is perspective. Other viewpoints. Other experiences. Approaches. Techniques. Ways of seeing. When you’re young it seems more important to develop these for yourself. Become your own artist and pursue your own vision. Once established it can become a rut. So with age comes wisdom, right? The wisdom to recognize your own limitations and appreciate others’ wisdom. I’m not gonna say I’m mature or anything, 'cause…I’m not. But I have reached the point where I can let go of my own point of view and value, or at least take on, other people’s.
Not at all. I’m enjoying your thoughts. I think people plateau out when they become satisfied with their work. That seems strange because isn’t the point to be satisfied?
I suppose I’m not satisfied yet. Maybe never will be. Are all artists aspirational in one way or another? Competitively or just within their own minds? My growth as I’ve come to see it, is in my shift from almost pure representational to expressive. My thought processes are sometimes terribly literal and linear. Early days were full of minimal edits, nearly SOOC images. I felt that somehow it was virtuous. Pure. Having a background in darkroom and color labs meant I knew the limits of film and extended those limits to digital. Hogwash. Digital frees and I needed to embrace that freedom. My vision. My work. My rules; I make ‘em up. I don’t need to please anyone but me. I can do it however I want. SOOC isn’t a virtue. It isn’t a judgment on you if you spend 14 days on post processing to get your shot the way you want it. At least if your work is for you alone, not when you’re on assignment.
My editing needs to catch up to my vision. When in the field these days, I’m often imagining how I want the final image to look. At least a little. Things might change when I see it on the screen, but I’m extending my workflow from standing on the scene through processing. That’s why learning about the capabilities in Ps is important to me now - there are tools there to realize my vision; even to create vision - to dream.
So maybe satisfaction comes from striving. With growing and stretching and, most of all, learning. Will this make me better? Improve my work? Who knows? But sometimes the journey is the joy, not just the destination.
NPN is one of the few places on the internet where you can get brutally honest critique, and yet still feel good about it. The comments here are usually constructive, with a learning emphasis. And most folks will tell you why they made a comment, and that reinforces teaching too. There is a lot to be said for having an open mind, and having the courage to see your work through the eyes of other experienced photographers. For me, I appreciate that it forces me to stretch on some things, and try new approaches. If all you hear is “attaboys”, is it any wonder that it’s easy to fall into the rut that @Igor_Doncov warns about?
As I said in your other post, get yourself to Tony Kuypers website. It will open your eyes to a whole new world of possibilities. Don’t worry about not knowing Photoshop, Sean Bagshaws TK videos also teach you enough about layers, masks, etc to unlock the power of Luminosity Masks. You strike me as someone who won’t get caught up in processing for processings sake. Luminosity Masks are nothing but a tool, but they are a very powerful tool. As long as you have the experience and creative vision to know what goals you want to accomplish with processing, luminosity masks give you the power to do almost anything you can imagine. It sounds like you have specific ideas about what you want to accomplish, but lack experience with more advanced tools that could allow you to do it. That’s the next big step for you, and Kuyper/Bagshaw is a great option to do that, if you are seriously interested in investing the time to get better at processing.
After all these thoughts about processing, LM and sky replacement a very down-to-earth remark about this beautiful image : maybe I would crop a little more.
I know from experience that it is very difficult to frame an image when your in a moving and shaking boat, you did a great job. And I like the red light on the tree. For me, you can cut a bit from the left edge.
I’ll go watch the vids.
: maybe I would crop a little more.