Fog Hugging Mountain

[mrme]

There's something wrong about this image that I can't seem to figure out. Any suggesstions on what I could do to improve this picture.

[Donald]

What are the sort of things you think are wrong with it. Is it about the composition? Or the exposure? What is it you like about it?

[mrme]

I like the way the fog wraps around the mountain. Perhaps the composition would be better without the trees on the right. But my problem with the image is that there seems to be something wrong with the tones in the image.

[Donald]

I like the way the fog wraps around the mountain. Perhaps the composition would be better without the trees on the right.

I'd agree with your assessment on that. The tree could have added to it to give a counter-balance on the right. But I feel it is just too far over on the right and there's quite a gap between it and the main body of the mountain on the left. So, yes, I think I'd want to try it with the tree cropped out.

But my problem with the image is that there seems to be something wrong with the tones in the image.

I think the only software you have used on this is Picasa (according to the EXIF info). So was it shot as a JPEG? Or am I missing something and did you shoot this as a RAW? There is no other EXIF data in the file so we can't see what your camera settings were. Was the sky exposed pretty much as we see it now and was the land (the hillside) very dark? Have you used a control in Picasa to bring detail back into that hillside, or is the hillside looking pretty much as it came out of the camera?

[mrme]

I think the only software you have used on this is Picasa (according to the EXIF info).

Huh, that's weird I never used Picasa. The picture is being retreived from my Google+ profile. if you look at the picture here, then you can look at the exif data by going to options in the bottom left and hitting photo details.
The shutter speed was 1/42 of a second
The aperture was set to f/3.2
The focal length was 7.1 mm --which doesn't sound right, my lens can only go down to 24mm.
The ISO was at 100
And I used a Fujifilm FinePix HS10

The camera was shot in raw. Here is the original.
originally the hillside was brighter, and everything was muted down and dull looking.

I'll try bringing back some of the detail in the shadows.

[mrme]

Here it is with the shadows brightened up

And with the crop added.


Looks much better with the shadows brightened. Thanks for pointing this out, Just recently(a couple days ago) I realized that I have a problem with making my pictures too dark. This was definitely one of those circumstances.

[Donald]

And in a few steps you have identified the issue and taken the action to address it and produced an image that's just miles better. Well done. All I did was ask a few questions. That is now an image that can really stand up there and with which you should, I think, be really happy.

And now .... I think it's a debatable point whether it's better with the tree out or not. Now, I really like the wider aspect ration that keeps the tree in the frame.

It is interesting how Google (who I believe own Picasa) has put a Picasa stamp on it. I have a EXIF viewer in my Firefox browser and when I right clicked on the image and chose 'View Exif' it just said 'Picasa'.

[Polar01]

Hope you do not mind what I did, when I saw you raw shot, I saw a purple tint in the sky. I like the tree in LRHC as it give a sense of depth and scale, so I lighten the LLHC to balance the brightness. I worked the sky in a lot of areas, mainly I lessened the contrast and brightness of the bright areas, then added contrast and structure into the fog then over all increased the brightness. I noticed in you RAW shot, that you did very little, maybe in the future try a more work there to see what you can achieve, before bring it out to work on in the program you use for post processing. Very nice composition.

Allan

[mrme]

Thank you Allan and Donald for showing me what was possible with my image.

I noticed in you RAW shot, that you did very little, maybe in the future try a more work there to see what you can achieve

What would you suggest I do in my RAW shot before I start processing the image in GIMP.

I lessened the contrast and brightness of the bright areas, then added contrast and structure into the fog

I was doing the wrong thing and I added contrast to the entire picture instead of the clouds only. I seem to like contrast a lot, but as you showed in your picture I needed to do the opposite to the mountains and reduce the contrast. Thanks for showing me this.

What does LRHC and LLHC stand for?

[Polar01]

Lower Right Hand Corner, Lower Left Hand Corner, you guess the other two. I use to work for a book printing and binding company for many years. As to the Raw shot let me take a look at what I did compared to what you did. I recopied your Raw shot to look at your setting, I thought their were some but they were all "0", so here are the setting that I ended up using: Temperature (-3) tint (-4), Exposure 0, Recovery +35, Fill +20, Black +4, Brightness 0, contrast +36, Clarity +12, Vibrance +16, Saturation (-37). Remember these are the final setting before I moved the photo to my post processing program (CS5 and NIK Viveza 2 which spot controls light management (brightness, contrast, sat, structure, shadow, tints). As you change the setting is raw as you move one you sometimes have to go back adjust some of the other settings. It takes time, and practice and a willing to do it over and over and over again. Look foreward to seeing more of your postings.

Allan

[mrme]

I edited the picture to this

I think it looks better when turned yellow, and with this crop.

Alan did you do any further changes globally when you moved to CS5 and NIK Viveza 2, or did you only do local changes to specific parts of the image. I want to know if when changing the image in RAW if you had a plan to further change things like contrast later, or if you were trying to get as close to possible to the desired result in RAW.