Yesterday's Sunrise - Looking for C&C

[kap55]

I'm trying to use a more muted/lower contrast approach during my post processing.



Thanks,

Brian

[NorthernFocus]

Mission accomplished with the pastel sky. Looks like dawn. Compositionally there is a lot of dead space in the bottom of the frame. You may consider eliminating it or in future include something like a near fenceline. Or shoot from a lower persective that naturally minimizes it.

[bnnrcn]

+1 to Dan's comments and I like the shot

[kap55]

Thanks for the comments. I had driven by this location yesterday and there were hay bales in the field that would have made a great foreground. When I came early the next morning they had been moved. Guess I'll have to wait for the next harvest.

[bnnrcn]

I had the same experience here Brian. I saw the hay bales while riding my scooter and the next day when I went there for shooting they had been removed already

[Kodiak]

Hey Brian,
The price to pay (since, in photography, its all a trade off) for a low contrast
approach, is the lost of tonal saturation and of micro contrast. Yes, you succeeded
to render the way you tried… but the rendition does not convey the atmosphere
associated to a low sun in such a scene. The greens rendition got somewhat muddy
and there is little left of the colour intensity and clouds details that one may expect.
A possible next approach could be a split neutral density filter or a two stop stack.

[Manfred M]

Brian - Dan's comment on the foreground echo's my view as well.

I understand your exploration of the pastels, but somehow the black point and white point seem to be a bit off in this image. I think you can bring both in without compromising the look you are after and give the image a bit more depth Looks like a slight green and / or yellow colour cast too (I'm not on a calibrated screen right now, so can't say for sure).

[Shadowman]

Foreground is too clearly presented and distracts from the sunrise. Actually it's a good complement to each other.

[kap55]

Thanks for the comments - they are helping. For those mentioning the green/yellow cast - it was added. Here is SOOC - but be aware that I took bracketed shots and used Photomatix to fuse the images. edit: this is the middle of the 3 shot bracket



After the fused image was created it was used with various Topaz plugins to created the originally posted image. The final image (shown in first post) is masked, with the sky being processed separately from the foreground.