We got into the park early. 5:30AM. Well before sunrise and I was able to find this scene while it was still just getting light. Turned out to have great clouds and beautiful sunrise.
This is a 3 shot HDR with 2+/- . I merged the RAW into LR and darkened the sky and lightened the sand. Trying to balance so it is natural.
All comments are welcomed.
Canon R6, Canon 24-105mm, 70mm, ISO 100, F/14, 1/100sec, Tripod
LR
@Charlie_Chaffee - Having photographed many, many times at White Sands, it always provides some great opportunities. Glad you had a chance there as well.
I like the composition with the Yucca and the nice ripples in the sand.
The issue for me is this image doesn’t feel natural. If there were that much color in the sky, it would create color in the white sand. That sand is very reflective, almost like water sometimes. The colors there are also soft and pastel and this image has very bold colors in the sky from the HDR treatment. I think that is the biggest reason it doesn’t feel natural to me. The initial impression I get is two separate images, blended. I know from your description that isn’t the case, but the foreground/sky just don’t feel like they belong together. Hope that makes sense.
I have similar thoughts as @Keith_Bauer . The foreground has nice detail and the yucca plant is nicely placed. The sky is amazing. Along the horizon it is out of focus and artifacts indicating something went wrong with the HDR merge. Personally I never use Lightroom HDR. Most modern cameras have plenty of dynamic range and if you expose for the highlights you can recover quite a bit in the shadows without much noise. If you do need to exposure blend, I find using luminosity masks to blend multiple frames in Photoshop works well.
Hi Charlie,
My first thought when seeing this photo was why is the sand not reflecting the color in the sky? White anything will take on the color of light falling on it. While composition is great the lighting is not natural. When you processed your different exposures for the blend, did you keep the same color temperature for each exposure?
Hi Charlie, the composition with that yucca is really nice and I like the lines and forms in the ripples in the sand. As the others have already said, the sky doesn’t seem to match the land but I think it would be well worth it to work on this some more because it has potential for sure!
Thanks. I did rework and followed Dean’s suggestion and just used the one photo. I did darken it a bit and used a linear gradient on the sand to lighten it and bring up the temp. Let me know what you think and do I still have a way to go.
The rework is a huge improvement over the original post. There is still some halo going on at the horizon below the distant mountains.
Hey Charlie! I think your re-edit is on the right track! Kudos to you. I think maybe finding an in between from the first to the second would get it just right.
This is it. Got rid of the halo on the mountains. I think I am done. Thanks all of you for the very helpful comments.
Very nice job on the rework. I think that it looks excellent now!
The rework is a lot better! Nice!
