Big cypress

What technical feedback would you like if any?

Comments are always welcome

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Is it distracting to have the white flower right up front…ie getting the viewer’s attention before going back into the photo?

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)

Focus-stacked…and Exposure-blended

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Hi Doug,

Looks like some pretty epic light and is quite a nicely composed image too.

I do find the white flower distracting in this image but I dont think the composition would work without it. It’s position in the frame (in the corner) draws you into the patch of yellow flowers and then off into the distance. If it were more a feature of the image it would drae the eye less. I do like the way the yellow flowers draw yo in.

There are a few things I noticed from a technical standpoint here. As you mentioned in your post you have both focus stacked and blended this image. I have to admit focus stacking grasses is always a brave decision as any movement will cause huge issues. There is a small amount of ghosting but in general the focus stack is pretty good. I did notice a large area of softness around the area where is assume the image was exposure blended. Your sharp grasses all of a sudden beclome soft and then the sharpness picks up again in the trees behind. See screenshot.

While we are zoomed in here I noticed some haloing on the horizon. You can remove this by using the clone stamp tool in ‘darker colour’ mode. Have a google. There are some pretty good vids on how to use the function.

In the second screenshot here there is some abberation around where the trees meet the sky. Blues at the top of the branches and red on the lower parts of them. This could be a artefact from the lens you are using that went uncorrected in lightroom. Processing of scenes like this with a high dynamic range can really hightlight chromatic abberations as you start to adjust hightlights and such. If there is any abberation there in the first place then it can get worse quickly. Again, one of the clone stamp modes could help here.

Onto the image as a whole. Given that you are shooting directly into the sun the light in the two halves of the image is vastly different.

I’ll start with the upper half of the image. You obviously have a lot of blown (or close to) blown highlights here but I dont mind it too much. I live the way the sun is sitting in the gap and lighting up the scene. You could look at some of the transtions between light and dark to make sure they are smooth. When you recover highlights too much you can get very harsh/crunchy transitions.

I would look at the light fall off between where the sun is setting towards the edge of the images (ULC). The exposure gets darker and then all of a sudden gets lighter and more purple. To my eye it is not very natural. In the final image I had a quick go at processing I used a series of exposure adjustments and graduated filters in PS to try and balance it out. The primary adjustment was over two stops, so quite a significant adjustment in light.

Onto the foreground. Where the sky is full of drama and mood, the foreground is completely the opposite. It’s quite flat and just lacks the general dynamism of the upper portion of the shot. I feel that when shooting scenes like these that you need parity between the sky and foreground.

I have made a few adjustments to the image to try and ballance the exposure and contrast. I dropped the overall exposure of the foreground by 1.16 stops in PS and applied it locally with the grad tool. I also upped the contrast by 57 point (again applied locally). To keep the luminosity of the yellow flowers up. I darkened some of the darker midtones in the grasses.

Oh, I also cloned the small tree out on the right horizon. As it was touching the edge of the frame it catches the eye.

Here is my quick and dirty PS edit of this shot. I’m not saying that what I have done is perfect nor the only way to tackle this shot but I think it’s heading in the right direction. Also, now that I look at it uploaded here. With the exposure balance more even, the white flower is less of a distraction.

And here I will stop writing :slight_smile: Hope it helps!

Cheers,
Eugene

Beautiful composition! I find white flower in foreground and bright sky in background distracting. You might want to get rid of them.

The composition and light look very good. I think you nailed the light in the processed version. The white flowers don’t bother me at all.