Why I can't shoot good sharp high quality photos?

[jcuknz]

There are some peculiar things about this photo in that the foreground and clouds are sharp buit not the middle distances. Then the halo which looks like careless PP is I think the line between standing trees and felled area. Whatever when I openned it in Paint Shop Pro and added an adjustment layer/curves I found very little in the shadow part of the graph. Moving the bottom of the line to the right darkened the foreground. I also pulled the top end of the line to the right too. I don't see how for 99.9% of the time a GND would do anything for me when I have PSP. Of course I am biased towards PSP

[ajohnw]

I suspect with this one you could have exposed for a perfect sky and then just brightened up the for ground. I just darkened it to get a better match for the sky. HDR is ok but there is usually a need to try and retain some realism. I did one of a duck whose body was really under exposed but the water was fine so I developed the duck for max detail and more or less the same for the water and merged them - no need for realism there. Some one else took 3 shots of a room and merged them - no need for realism. A landscape needs to look real.



I'm not saying that is perfect but like this the shot tends to draw the eye into it which is ok. Also think that the sky is the main feature so the darker foreground helps emphasise that. You must be getting there my wife took one look and said that's a nice picture.

-

[Meisam]

I think I am getting what you guy say, here is an example of what I'm trying hard to achieve:



Here the foreground is bright ! but the sky still look bright also far mountains!
I like this shot (mostly because it shot with wide lens)

Do you mean these sort of shots which are not look real are wrong or not acceptable as a good shot?!

[Colin Southern]

I think I am getting what you guy say, here is an example of what I'm trying hard to achieve:



Here the foreground is bright ! but the sky still look bright also far mountains!
I like this shot (mostly because it shot with wide lens)

Do you mean these sort of shots which are not look real are wrong or not acceptable as a good shot?!

Sorry, not seeing an image

[Meisam]

Here is that pic on Tinypic..

[ajohnw]

I think I am getting what you guy say, here is an example of what I'm trying hard to achieve:




Do you mean these sort of shots which are not look real are wrong or not acceptable as a good shot?!

There aren't any rules really but taking this shot as I posted it there is a "moody" sky so if the rest of the shot doesn't blend into that it's going to look odd. The other aspect is perspective. Naturally land get darker and shows less detail with distance but the near distance needs to match the mood of the light that is available.

I think you have been mislead on the "golden hour". If you want to make use of that the shot needs to show the general lighting effects it produces. Brighten it up to much and the effects are lost. It's main advantage is that during the worst time of the day noon especially in countries that get a lot of sunshine things have a tendency to look washed out and show no interest at all - especially landscapes. Landscapes can look very boring. The saving grace of the one you posted is the sky.

To see the general idea look at this link and see a master at work. You will notice he always shows something about a scene and often there is an object of interest in it.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=con...w=1320&bih=873

Another is Turner. Probably a bit HDR and similar in some ways to what people are inclined to do to phot's.

-

[ajohnw]

Here is that pic on Tinypic..

Found a video for you that shows how that sort of thing is done. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCYQ863auWo I like the mention of over tone mapping - it's true. The shot you have posted needs more work though. Notice how detail under the water is bought out also the land and how both fade away into the distance. Also that general light levels still match the scene. Given that the camera can't actually capture what was really there it's basically a case of making it look right. I suspect that was all done with brushes. As to the shot I strongly suspect it's a fairly heavily cropped wide angle shot to stretch distance.

Another video showing tone mapping with layers. More subtle and wrong package but probably CS like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMlKVDjJFfY . He does mention that "things" can be done with the masking layers, original shot too and even by adding more modifying layers. If you ask the people who post these tutorials some times they will do one for exact;ly what some one wants to do. There are loads on there for all packages. It's getting to be a useful way of finding out about all sorts of things eg want a laptop and which ones break - look on youtube.

You need the scene, the right idea of what to do with it and experience with using what ever package you use.

-

[ajohnw]

And here is a yuck way way over the top example using cs5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulFeb...feature=fvwrel

-

[Meisam]

I will do another edit John and I will post it here as soon as I can!
You bright my day dude!! Thanks a lot!

Regards

[ajohnw]

You need the shot to come up with the one you posted but there is no harm imporving any shot you take.

The first video gives the biggest clue - get the sky correct especially when there are clouds about. They can always be darkened. And for Collins benefit it can be done to jpg's too especially if it's just dark areas that need bringing out. Else where may not be so easy. It varies.

-

[Manfred M]

Meisam; rather than going to HDRI, you could also look at working with vibrance, saturation and contrast in PP. It's easy to overdo it, but if you get it right, your image will just "pop". Using a polarizing filter (assuming that the sun direction worls for you) will give the sky and clours a bit more more saturation.

[Meisam]

Thanks to John for the great tutorial, I made this edit with camera raw (ACR 7.1) instead of Lightroom.



What do you guys think?

[stelin]

Thanks to John for the great tutorial, I made this edit with camera raw (ACR 7.1) instead of Lightroom.



What do you guys think?

This is much much nicer (to my eye at least) than the original.
Personally, if possible I always take a bracketed sequence of 5 RAW images. - This enables me to choose the best one to manipulate as a single image as getting the exposure just right may be tricky, and also enables me to go for an HDR if I want to.

rgds Steven

[Meisam]

This is much much nicer (to my eye at least) than the original.
Personally, if possible I always take a bracketed sequence of 5 RAW images. - This enables me to choose the best one to manipulate as a single image as getting the exposure just right may be tricky, and also enables me to go for an HDR if I want to.

rgds Steven

I did the same but 3 bracketed photos from -1 to +1 stop.
I will work on -1 and I might have a silhouette shot!

[Polar01]

Meisam That looks like a late evening shot, I like it much better than the orginal one posted.

Cheers:

Allan

[Meisam]

Meisam That looks like a late evening shot, I like it much better than the orginal one posted.

Cheers:

Allan

Thank you Allan

another shot (-1) same place, reducing black area to reach rule of the third.

[Manfred M]

While playing with the clouds, you have lost all shadow detail and the bottom third of your image is just a dark blob. That doesn't really work.

[Meisam]

While playing with the clouds, you have lost all shadow detail and the bottom third of your image is just a dark blob. That doesn't really work.

Is it a silhouette shot? I mean this dark blob is what I wanted to be!

[stelin]

I did the same but 3 bracketed photos from -1 to +1 stop.
I will work on -1 and I might have a silhouette shot!

Depending on the lighting using 5 frames I usually go from around -2.5 to -3 up to + 1.5 to +2.
1 stop either way doesn't give enough latitude for an HDR in very contrasty lighting.

[Manfred M]

Is it a silhouette shot? I mean this dark blob is what I wanted to be!

That was my point Meisam - having a large area with limited or no shadow detail that takes up 1/2 to 1/3 of your image is usually not considered to be a good composition. Take a look at the examples that you have posted as shots you were trying to emulate; while some of them are dark, the areas that are missing shadow detail are small to non-exisitant.