Stairway at Chateau De Peyrepertuse, France

[Don Chesnut]

I'm new to this forum and still trying to learn about posting, etc. This is a capture of a stairwary at Chateau De Peyrepertuse in France. My wife and I visited southern France at the beginning of October. I took quite a few images with HDR in mind and they are available to be seen on my flickr page. The address is:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/60974478@N03
Comments are appreciated. I still have a lot to learn about HDR post processing.

[Viana]

This is a very interesting shot, Don with great potential. The HDR effect is very subtle. For my taste, I find that the pix can use a bit of adjustment, because it is rather flat and does not elicit the deep, dark, fanatic crusader mood that must have prevailed.


Since Peyrepetuse means pierced rock, I felt that one could emphasize that.


I hope you don’t mind, I adjusted in Lightroom, straightened the shot and did a bit of tweaking via Topaz.


If it were my photo I might also consider plunking in a gorgeous, cloud filled sky to emphasize the cold, rocky fortress and this most important stairway vs. the beauty and lightness of Nature. Conversely, a brooding, cloudy sky might also work. Now, with another sky one might want to emphasize more of the cold blue, depending on which weather conditions one would want to prevail.


I know how tough these captures are when one is on a trip and you get what you get because of time and weather constraints.