(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Terry, Welcome to NPN and thanks for posting this image. I really like the composition, especially the two triangular logs pointing down the water. This creates nice visual flow. The smoothness of the water is also really nice, and the greens really pop. The sky looks a bit surreal to me and has a lot of digital noise. The seriously angry clouds seem out of sync with the tone of the rest of the image. Still, you have a nice image here. I look forward to seeing more of your images.
Terry, welcome to NPN. An interesting image that you posted.
I like the scene, the way the water leads my eye into the image. I like the colors a lot.
A less like the typical HDR look. You ask if it is overdone and yes, for me it is overdone. And that is not the result of the extended DR, I think, but of the local contrast enhancement done by Photomatix in the mode that you selected. The noise mentioned by @Larry_Greenbaum, and the fringing around the branches in the upper L and R corners, is probably exaggerated by Photomatix as well. I used Photomatix in the past and if I remember well, there is a setting without the local contrast enhancement. The LCE gives you a perception of sharper images, but also creates the “surreal” look. You can play a bit with the settings, or try a blend of the image that you posted with an image without the LCE.
But this is a matter of taste of course, and if you are happy with the result that you posted you can stay with the settings you used.
Hi Terry and welcome to NPN! My thoughts would echo Han and Larry said. I think the composition works very well but the sky doesn’t fit the foreground lighting. If you do like the sky, I would desaturate or clone out the heavily light cyan areas at the far left and right of the visible sky. Those spots don’t match the rest of it. It sure is a beautiful location and your comp shows it well.
I look forward to seeing more of your work and reading your comments and thoughts on other work. Welcome.
Hi Terry and welcome to NPN, thanks for sharing your work with us. I would echo the comments of the others so far. I like the concept of the image, and I think you have a pretty effective, well balanced composition, with strong leading lines.
But the HDR is significantly over done IMO, for the reasons noted by @Han_Schutten. I recognize that everyone has different goals and approaches for their photography. But I just don’t think the use of Photomatix is doing you any favors with this image, if your intent was to create natural looking landscapes. If your intent is to create “photo art”, then Photomatix works for that.
As a new member, it might help to tell us a little about your photographic style and objectives. If your goal is to do creative, but realistically believable landscapes, there are some other tools tools to consider. The Lightroom Merge to HDR function does a much better job IMO of blending exposure brackets for increased dynamic range in a realistic way. Many more advanced folks use Luminosity Masks like TK Actions to blend exposures (this is a more complex tool, with a steeper learning curve then Lightroom). The advantage of both of these methods is that they allow the user much more control over how the output looks by using familiar LR and PS tools. Way back when I experimented with Photomatix, I never found their settings/sliders very intuitive to use, and moved on to the other tools.
If your goal was to create “photo art” that’s fine too, don’t get me wrong. It depends what you were trying to achieve.
Hi Terry and welcome. I also agree with the previous comments but mostly with regard to the sky. There’s an undo amount of contrast there for me and I find it distracting. I also think the color is unrealistic. I played with it quickly in PS and reduced the contrast and changed the color in the sky to a warmer tone which I think is more fitting. Of course you may like it as is which is fine…just one person’s take on it.
Terry, welcome aboard. I won’t rehash what others have said, which is all solid advice - but give you a suggestion if the highly tone mapped look was a stylistic choice that you want to stick with but still want to give it a slightly more natural balance - pull back on the blue saturation in the sky by around 30-50%. I believe it was Mark Metternich who once told me that over saturation of blues in the sky was one of the fastest ways for a viewer to be pulled out of ‘reality’ when viewing an image, and think it would be a good tip to apply here.
Beyond that, if you decide to go back and do a more complete rethink of the edit, I will say that I love the texture in the water up front, all those water plants create an amazing texture that I would certainly find a way to maintain regardless of other decisions.
Hi Terry; welcome! I look forward to your participation and seeing more images.
On the technical side, the composition works well for me. I like the flow of the trees and water leading to that focal point, and the sky has great drama.
As to the HDR and color, if I may ask are you working on a calibrated monitor?
Terry,
Welcome to NPN. I have to agree with all the others. The composition is wonderful and draws you right in. But without knowing the intent of your work, as Ed mentioned, its hard to give an objective critique. Personally, subjectively speaking, I find the image overcooked digitally and would not expect my eyes to see the scene like this.
Thank you Larry. I have been a photographer for 40 years but am relatively new to some of the digital tools and have been unsure what is “real”.
Thanks Han. I need to play more with Photomatix but I am coming to the conclusion that it is time to move on to a more “realistic” software.
Thanks Harley. I will keep working on it.
Thanks Ed. I guess I am still trying to decide what I like. I do lean to a more processed look but I am interested in selling and that keeps me waffling. I have 40 years experience in photography with wildlife and scenics as my main subjects. I have produced a few calendars and seem to get the best responses on images that “pop” with more contrast and color.
Thanks Jon. That is really good advice about the skies. I am guilty of that in many cases and I will watch it more closely from now on.
Thanks Steve. It is really good to have your version as a comparison. I can better understand a lot of the comments now. Honestly, I am not sure which I like better, but I lean toward yours.
Thanks John. As to the answer to your question, yes and no. I can calibrate my laptop but my larger monitor seems to “self-calibrate”. However, I can definitely see a difference between my effort and Steve Zimic’s image so I suspect my monitor is close. I have been leaning toward more saturated images but I don’t want surreal.
Thanks Youssef. That is kind of what I was looking for. Someone looking at the photo and saying, “really?” That looks kinda fake. I don’t want fake, I want fabulous and I realize that sometimes there is a difference between real and what we can capture and that the capture needs a little help. I probably “help” too much.
I’ve found it difficult to get realistic images from Photomatix. You may want to look at Aurora HDR software. I rarely use a tripod for my bracketed images because the alignment feature works perfectly. It also does a very good job on deghosting.
You’re welcome, Terry.
I see that @Steve_Zimic recommends Aurora HDR if you want to keep working on HDR, I could add SNS-HDR to that. It is not very expensive (€30), has several presets and can be customized completely. Does a good job on aligning as well.
