What caught me here was the way the light seemed to be pouring onto this point at the edge of the creek, but at the same time was unable to reach around the bend. The contrast of the light and shadows drew me in. Add to that the way these trees are somehow able to secure themselves to these rocks and still find the nutrients needed to survive kinda blew me away.
Full disclosure…this is an HDR image, I took 5 exposures but ended up not using the darkest one. I have the TK panel but I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around how to exposure blend complex scenes like this where there isn’t a clean horizon line to blend together. Not sure if that is due to my inexperience or if that is really a limitation of exposure blending and more complex blends like woodland often creates.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
Does the composition work for you? What’s the good, bad and the ugly?!
Suggestions for blends like this so I don’t resort to HDR…or is HDR ok in a situation like this? I really tried to keep it within the realm of possibility and not open up shadows too much.
Any other CC is welcome.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Open to all CC.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Shot at f11 with exposures ranging from 1.0 - 4.0 sec.
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Hi David. This scene has a lot of potential, but the extreme contrast that attracted you initially makes it very difficult to pull this off technically. There are some scenes that the dynamic range is just so much that you can’t reveal all the detail you want in a realistic looking way. I agree, those trees growing on the boulders are really cool looking, but they get lost in the extreme contrast of this light. This is a good location, but with the wrong kind of light. Come back on an overcast or rainy day, and you would be in business, and you can do justice to those amazing trees growing on the boulders.
Dappled light like this can be hard for luminosity mask blends to handle, you have to be pretty experienced at LM’s to attempt a blend here. You may instead want to try Lightroom Merge to HDR with your brackets, it will return a raw file with a wider dynamic range, that you can process in the normal Lightroom way.
HDR is not a bad thing in and of itself, if it is done tastefully. However, many preset driven HDR softwares make it easy to end up with an overcooked look, shadows with too much detail, loss of contrast, halos, etc. You at least knew to avoid that. But this this scene is pretty challenging from a dynamic range perspective, sometimes you just have to recognize it and walk away.
@Ed_McGuirk thanks for this thoughtful comment. One of the things that I feel like is really foundational to all of this and that I continue to struggle with is what exactly is “good light” in photography? Obviously it is different in a variety of circumstances/subjects, but I feel like it is talked about often but rarely explained. In some instances having that bright pop works…and in others it doesn’t. I just have to keep experimenting to find when it’s ok and when it isn’t, figuring out how to recognize that is the challenge right now.
I can see why you are attracted to this scene and I am not too worried about some of the technical details to the mage. I think it can be cleaned up though especially on the edges (triangles on the lower right corner area, the root on the left edge). I am even tempted cropping to the furthest tree on the right so you won’t have a bright strip on the right edge.
@Adhika_Lie Thank you for this! I haven’t quite given up on it yet, actually just spent some time working on it trying to compress the dynamic range a bit more and bring out some more shadows with out it looking funny. I took your suggestions, I think you are right regarding the crop on the right side, it actually ended up removing the bright triangle at the bottom as well.
You are right, the definition of "Good Light " depends on a number of factors. High contrast light like this is great for showing off shadows and highlights, and the contrast can create interesting silhouettes and rich colors. It’s not so great for maximizing the detail and texture in shadow areas, you can only take that so far in these type of scenes. So if it’s the contrast between light and shadow that attracts you, that’s fine. But if you want to emphasize the colors, details and textures in those trees growing on the rocks, then the even, low contrast light of an overcast day would be good light for that type of image.
I wouldn’t necessarily give up on this image either. In your rework I like the warmer more saturated colors in the sunlit area. But you have started to lose contrast in the shadows of those sunlit trees. On those sunlit trees look at their left side comparing between the original and your rework. You need to restore some darks contrast in the sunlit area. I think you have done a good job adding detail in the shadow area in the right half of the image, while keeping it realistic looking. Since you use TK Luminosity Masks, here is a good technique for lifting shadow detail while maintaining contrast (avoids the bad HDR look). Use a TK subtracted mask (Darks 2 - Darks 5) on a levels adjustment layer, and slide the right triangle in levels to the left. This lifts shadows, but not in the very darkest tones, which helps maintain contrast and keeps it more realistic looking. here is my rework, which starts from your rework, and does both of the things I just discussed. This is a challenging dynamic range situation to apply this technique to, and my rework borders on unrealistic looking. But I show it to make you aware of the technique, which may be of help in the future .
Thanks, @Ed_McGuirk. Great tips, those helped quite a bit. I added both of them but backed off the right side a bit from where you had it. I have done similar things like you suggested with the D2-D5 but for whatever reason didn’t think of it here. Thanks for the suggestions!
The repost really nails the light and I quite like @Ed_McGuirk 's crop. It was well worth the rework effort as it yielded a huge improvement. Very well done.
Good light depends on what you’re trying to say with your image. Contrasty images convey one feeling and images with a similar tonality convey another. Images that have a similar tone can be lowtoned, midtoned, or hightoned. Each contains a different emotion. The only rule for getting good light is that it should be within the dynamic range of the camera. The rest is up to you. The histogram in your camera should never be clipped at either end and should be an f stop away from either end to be easily worked on in photoshop. It is much harder to recover darks than it is to bring down bright areas. This flexibility depends on how close your shot is to the ends of the histogram and the quality of the sensor in your camera.
Good light is often associated with early morning or evening because you can shoot subjects in sunlight and still be within the camera’s dynamic range. This changes with latitude. You can have good light in northern Alaska all day long. You can also get good light by shooting on high overcast days because the sunlight is soft and does not produce harsh shadows. That would be the optimal light for this image because the morning and evening light is so low angular it’s likely to not even enter this area during those times. The background might not be in the sun at all.
The problem with harsh sunlight that’s still within the camera’s dynamic range is that it produces a multitude of small very dark shadows. If you try to recover these shadows the image continues to look badly fragmented and ‘busy’ (your eye jumps around everywhere). You have to use shadows in your composition during midday and that means large dark shapes worked into other shapes. Also, the color starts to drop as the sun reaches up into the sky. The very best of color can be obtained with the light on a rainy day.
It’s best to shoot an image with good light rather than shoot it in bad light and recover it in post processing. Processing rarely looks natural to a discerning eye. The ‘pop’ people introduce in processing always has an artificial aspect to it.
Good advice Igor. This is a great answer to Davids question on what makes “good” light. Just because you technically can recover extreme shadow detail doesn’t always mean you should.
What I find interesting is that the artificiality introduced in photoshop has become a goal with many photographers. We seem to be going in that direction. Well, it’s a big subject. There are books written on creative photography and what it means.
Interesting capture David. I love the tree roots clawing their way around the large boulders looking for a foothold and also nutrients. I also like what you did in your reprocessing to come up with what you did. It’s considerably better than your original post. I’ve added a couple of different perspectives here. The bright orange in the trees and on the ground on the left side of the image seems a little saturated and I thought the trees and the boulders themselves made for an interesting picture so I cropped down to include a little bit of warm light rom the left while focusing in on the trees. I also added some blue shadows and mid-tones to both images.
@Harley_Goldman thanks a lot, I am happy I stuck with it, I feel like it is not only a better image now, but actually closer to what I intended initially. I believe the feedback I’m getting is improving my work, hopefully it sticks and I can start incorporating it more on my own.
@Igor_Doncov That is really helpful, thank you for taking the time to write that up. A lot for me to process and think about. I agree that this image would be better served with more of a flat light situation. A little more subdued with just a hint of light on the point. You are correct though, I believe early/late there would be no light to speak of in this area. The more I think about it, “harsh” light seems to serve well to provide more of a spotlight effect when you want a specific part of the image to stand out. I’m thinking about images a lot of classic mountain photographs.
@David_Haynes That crop is really interesting…there are a number of images in this pano that I actually thought would be interesting by themselves. You are right regarding the oranges, they are a bit strong and I may tone them down a bit.
