A very early morning trip up to Bear Rock Preserve yielded a stunning morning sun rise over a sea of clouds. While the higher clouds obscured the sun preventing the sun burst, I was after beautiful colors ensued that made the trip worth while
Any and all feedback welcome.
7 Bracket exposure, ISO-100 , f/16
Stunning indeed. I like the warm colors in the sky contrasting with the cool colors in the cloud inversion/hilltops that are mirroring the warm foliage in the foreground and cool rocks. I don’t know if my eyes are tired but some of the foreground looks a tiny bit soft and the edges of the two hilltops closest to the foreground might have a bit of haloing–perhaps a result of exposure blending?
Very cool image, John. I love the colors. The comp is nice although you could lose a bit of the sky and still have a wonderful scene. The blue cast on the foreground rocks is stunning.
I see what @DeanRoyer mentions about the foreground. I think it’s caused by the focus stack and slight wind. Not a big deal in my view.
Cheers,
David
John,
First of all, welcome to NPN! I think this is your first post - and so welcome aboard!
This a grand and beautiful scene and even though it has a bit of a 50/50 composition split between the mountain top foreground and the sky and valley/fog layers, I think the diagonal split between them works overall. A great vista to be sure and I can imagine standing there absorbing it all.
The combined exposure in terms of color, luminosity is working well. I think however as mentioned, there are some considerable issues with the blending of images, resulting in some anomolies between the foreground tree line, mountain ridge as mentioned and the foreground in general where it appears all the images aren’t lined up.
I think this is a beautiful and grand landscape, but could use some processing improvements. I’d be curious with all those 7 exposures if there weren’t just 2 that could be hand blended? or HDR combined in ACR/LR (not sure what software you’re using for processing.) Great image, but could use some work.
thanks for posting and we look forward to your images and participation!
Lon
Welcome to NPN John. I like your composition and the scene. You have a wonderful sunrise glow in the sky, and those low hanging clouds in the valley below are just terrific allowing for just the tops of the hills to poke through. The rock in the foreground and the beginning of Fall colors make for a very nice view.
I see a few issue with this image. First, the horizon is tilted and needs a clockwise adjustment. Easy enough for sure. Second, all of the foreground elements are blurry. Not sure if this is just simple motion blur from the tripod being moved, windy conditions, or if it’s the blending. If it was windy and you are trying to blend 7 exposures with leaves and tree tops swaying about, it will be nearly impossible to blend without getting some major ghosting.
This scene does not look like it has the high dynamic range that would require more than one or two exposures. With that in mind, I’d be tempted to go back through your exposures and check the histogram on each to see if you can use just one or maybe two exposures (one if it was windy) and then as @Lon_Overacker suggests, do a simple HRD blend in either LR or PS with one click. I think this image could benefit from some tweaking but I think you nailed the tonal qualities in this scene.
Looking forward to seeing more of your images. I think you’ll find that the community here is a diversified group of photographers that love to offer help and suggestions in a fun and low stress way. In other words, we’re all here to have some fun and to make improvements to our own photography.
Thanks for the feed back. I am looking forward to being part of this community and growing my skills as a photographer
