Fiji interior landscape trial

[Stagecoach]

Today being damp and miserable yet again I took a trip part way into the interior of the island in the hope of scouting out some locations for experimenting in the future. You can only do so many beaches, palm trees and sea so the idea was to find some spots with hills in the backgrounds and capture the greenery.

Failure, as the clouds refused to reveal hardly anything in the distance, but I half expected that.

So here's a few attempts but maybe this type of scenery does not really lend itself to interesting pics.

18mm, f11, 1/100, ISO200


50mm, f16, 1/80, ISO200


14mm, f13, 1/125, ISO200


Any comments welcome as always.

Grahame

[Ron Schelldorf]

Today being damp and miserable yet again I took a trip part way into the interior of the island in the hope of scouting out some locations for experimenting in the future. You can only do so many beaches, palm trees and sea so the idea was to find some spots with hills in the backgrounds and capture the greenery.

Failure, as the clouds refused to reveal hardly anything in the distance, but I half expected that.

So here's a few attempts but maybe this type of scenery does not really lend itself to interesting pics.

18mm, f11, 1/100, ISO200


50mm, f16, 1/80, ISO200


14mm, f13, 1/125, ISO200


Any comments welcome as always.

Grahame

Hello Grahame:

I think you’re too critical of your work. Your composition is good, but I think you would benefit from a ND Graduated filter for the clouds. Or maybe a “curves layer adjustment”. The colors will pop.
I wished I was there.
Ron

[Mike Buckley]

I agree with everything Ron mentioned. These photos have terrific potential!

[gregj1763]

I second Ron's comments Grahame. The clouds in 1 & 3 could really give the images a lift if worked on, maybe a B & W?
If all fails mate, there is always the macro lens on a crappy weather day and from what I have seen on your Smugmug site you know your way around one of those lenses.
Cheers, Greg

[cliffmccartney]

Grahame,

I'm in total agreement with everyone here. I think the color and composition are good. I think I'd try to add some contrast overall, and then I'd spend some time trying to tease out some detail in the sky, especially on #1 and #3. Either a curves layer with a mask, or maybe an adjustment brush may do the trick.

They do have great potential.

[Stagecoach]

Ron, Mike, Greg and Cliff,

Thank you each for the words of encouragement, I am especially pleased that the term 'potential' has been used.

This was very much a trial for me to see what could be done with a somewhat bland countryside that is very much covered in rich overgrown vegetation with few places that have been cleared neatly. The sky on this occasion was almost featureless with very low cloud but that changes by the day and by the hour at times which will give a selection of moods available for the images.

Ron, I did take my graduated ND with me but then totally forgot about using it.

In the meantime I will work on these images more to practice and learn in that area and look forward to my next excursion. I'm now convinced I want to try and portray in images the beauty of the country landscape in other than the general beach and palm tree tendency.

[Brownbear]

Hi Grahame,

Beautiful images with tons of potential! You're making me miss the tropics, not the humidity but the sheer beauty. I adore the compositions and your use of the foreground. I always found the colours and clouds to be most beautiful early in the morning, and just before and after a storm for the light and amazing clouds... I like the cows, too.

[Mike Buckley]

Grahame,

For an eye-opening exercise, select one of the cloudy skies. Apply a really aggressive S-curve to it. Try other curves, such as pulling the center of the curve toward the bottom right corner of the graph. If you experiment with different curves, brightness and contrast sliders, you will see that some apparently bland, cloudy skies have lots of interest just waiting to be brought out in a photograph. I suspect that's true of at least your first and last photos.

[Dave Humphries]

I am especially pleased that the term 'potential' has been used.

Hi Grahame,

I hope you don't mind, I was intrigued to see what I could do with ACR (Adobe Camera RAW 8.2)

Original (so you can flick between them in Lytebox at CiC):


My attempt at "potentialising" it:


This may well be seen as "too much" by yourself or others, and that's fine, I was/am learning and unfortunately, in doing so, I went past the stage where I can refer back to what I did
I had meant to grab screen shots of the settings.

However, I don't think it matters too much exactly what I did, the general gist of it was:
The whole image had the exposure, clarity and vibrance increased and a small increase in colour temperature (CT).
A gradient filter was applied to the sky to bring down the exposure.
A gradient filter was also applied to the foreground and this cooled its CT down a bit.

There were numerous other adjustments made, but too many, in 3 different sets, for me to remember, even minutes after doing them - sorry.

The warming/yellowing of the central part was to give the impression of a hazy sunlight falling there, but it probably isn't a great idea, as we're obviously missing any shadows.

The result isn't as good as I was hoping (I could kid myself that starting with RAW would have been better) but regardless - I learnt a lot trying.

Anyway, I hope it helps, but if you object to my edit being in your thread, let me know by PM and I'll remove it.

All the best,

[John 2]

I agree. The sky looks to have some detail and a bit of selective PP should bring it out.

[TonyW]

I think I disagree with everyone here. I can imagine being there and feeling and seeing the softness of the place, a nice warm comfortable feeling. The original pictures convey that to me and I prefer them just as they are. If they are made to "pop", the colours are wrong and jar.

[Stagecoach]

Hi Dave,

I certainly do not mind you 'potentialising' my images and what you have demonstrated convinces me to pursue this area farther.

My PP skills have not been practised much with this type of scene so I will progress this and have some good books here to help. I'll be putting some effort into PPing 1 & 3 tonight and will post.

From what you have done it's clear you do not need pretty blue sky and fluffy white clouds to make these not only interesting but pop as well. For my next attempts I will use the GND and also concentrate on achieving additional exposures to bring out the sky detail and land separately so these can be combined in post if necessary.

For interest, exposures were all fully manual and I simply use the viewfinder meter biased either side to adjust my histogram to what I want.

If only I had used the tripod for this shot as I had with No 3

Grahame

[Mike Buckley]

If they are made to "pop", the colours are wrong and jar.

I agree, Tony, and hope my post didn't accidentally mislead you. There are varying degrees of pop and these images need little more adjustment to take them to the next level in my opinion.

My 1-minute rework of the first photo is shown below. I selected the sky and pulled the center of the curve toward the lower right corner. I also decreased the brightness in the really bright part of the sky. I then increased the saturation and mid-tone contrast of the green foliage but only slightly. Nothing else...because I wanted to make sure the delicious mood in the original is maintained.

By the way, this image would make a fabulous black-and-white photo.

[Stagecoach]

Tony,

I hear exactly what you say and was very careful/wary with the original ones not to push vibrance, clarity, sharpening e.t.c up too much but believe there is scope for a certain increase that will not push things too far from what I saw.

Interesting that you used the word softness because when I ppd No 1 I found that my normal sharpening routine ruined the softness of the light green band of grass in the centre.

Grahame

[Stagecoach]

Reworks of No 1 & No 3 undertaken. For both images two copies made from the RAW file, one adjusted for the sky the other for the land and these then merged in Elements using a gradient mask. The objective was to increase the detail in the sky and I have attempted not too overdo the rest of the work.

I tried using curves but have to admit this is something I rarely use, levels being my main tool normally so I have some learning to do.

In this image I have intentionally left the bright area of the sky as I think this ties in with the reflection in the water?




Grahame

[Mike Buckley]

Regarding the photo with the cattle, there is a lot more interest in the sky that can be brought out. Even though you may not want to bring it out, try this exercise so you can know the possibilities that exist: Select the sky. Move a brightness slider hard to the left and move a contrast slider hard to the right.

[Stagecoach]

Mike,

I did exactly what you said and yes there is more interest in the sky so I have been working on this, disregarding if I want it or not because it's a very useful exercise for me. So, making the selection and using brightness/contrast revealed what could be done and gave me a target.

Using the RAW file this was opened in Elements and Levels set for the overall image, then looked at as above.

My first attempt tried to use 'selection' to make my adjustments but this very soon revealed the impossibility of selecting around trees e.t.c on the horizon.

The next approach was by using gradient masks and I experimented with using 'brightness/contrast', 'levels', elements standard 'curves', elements 'adjust lighting' and finally my 'curves plugin' of which I was able to achieve max control before getting major clipping and hash.

This is the absolute max I could pull out of the sky not without lack of trying



This is from the raw adjusted for highlights and shadows of which hardly required any adjustment and with contrast set to max and brightness reduced as much as possible. Does this suggest I'm looking for something that is not there?



Grahame

[Mike Buckley]

Does this suggest I'm looking for something that is not there?

No. There's a lot more there if you want to bring it out.

In the image shown below, I worked with your third to last photo...

1) Selected the sky using a control point (your software doesn't have control points). That selection included the tones in the land and cattle that had the same luminosity as the sky, so I quickly used a brush to remove the selection from that area of the image.

2) Darkened and increased contrast in the sky in one step. That created a halo around some of the trees that is probably the same effect that you described. So, I reverted to no change in the contrast. Though you can still see somewhat of a halo effect, keep in mind that I'm working with your small JPEG rather than your full-size file.

3) Selected almost all of the sky with a brush being certain not to get near the trees. Increased the contrast.

Recognizing that your software has no control points, I accomplished almost exactly the same look as shown below by selecting the sky with a brush being certain to avoid the trees. I then darkened and increased the contrast of the sky in one edit step.

If I erred in taste, I did so on the side of showing you that there is so much more to be brought out if you prefer the look. If I were satisfied with the overall look, I would then darken the left and right sides of the sky so they no longer pull my attention away from the center of the image.

[Mike Buckley]

By the way, I keep forgetting to mention that if I had my choice of making photos of Fiji's beach scenes or the inland scenes like the ones in this thread, I would go for the inland scenes almost every time.

[Stagecoach]

Mike,

Firstly, thanks for all your help with this as in a couple of days I have learnt and progressed in a new area that I am certainly going to pursue further. I have undertaken more work with that image but do not think that I would actually push the sky so much because in truth I'm pretty sure its not what I saw, not saying that I am against pushing things when needed.

What I have learnt is that if you get that exposure right there are so many possibilities to what you can accomplish in post. I was also pleased with this image as I used the Sigma 10 to 20 which in the years I have owned it has never produced a good image because either the exposure was very poor or I did not know how to correct things.

Today from the time I got up I took note that we had the most amazing variations of sky and light and although mainly cloudy and at times drizzily the changing affect on the greenery changed minute by minute and the light although very diffused remains bright. Then to top that as I drove past the harbour looking across the water to the hills in the far distance the waters green, the hills and mountain tops are clear and the skies are turning black before it rains and of course no camera. I have made a few attempts at this view, all unsuccessful but if only I had the camera with me today.

I'm pretty sure the golden hour is not going to limit me.

Grahame