Hey all, I've been dying to get out and take some photos with my new camera and I finally got around to it this weekend. I headed down to Wisley Common on Saturday (I was scouting locations) and ended up going back there on Sunday evening to photograph the sunset after finding what I felt was an awesome place to visualise it. Here are some of the photos I took over the two days: Any feedback would be great. Thanks!
My favourite is still #3. It's beautiful to look at through and through. I get lost in the waters and the little islands of grass and rock...the colours along with the overall picture just make me feel like I'm somewhere else. Second favourite is #1 - but this has changed since your flickr version. Contrast is upped, and it lost a bit of the dreamy and airy feeling that it had previously. To tell the truth, I guess I liked the original more, even though I think at the time I was stating contrast was a little washed. Here, the ferns really look dead - which puts a totally new dimension to the shot, but takes away a huge part of what I loved about it when I first saw it. 2,4 and 5 are all well-composed, but just don't do anything to me despite a gorgeous colour palate in 4 and 5. I dunno...maybe it's how dark their foregrounds are - I think that bugs me a little bit, particularly with how bright 5 is as your eye follows back. It might be intentional, but it just feels a touch unbalanced to me. If it's not intentional, this is where a good flashgun and a radio trigger of some sort would help you bucketloads. Oh, and the grass strands right in front of the lens in #5 are bugging me a bit Not sure if you added them for foreground element or just didn't move them out of the way, but figured I'd mention it.
Thanks Brett. I'm not sure about #1 - I like both treatments, but I'm indifferent about which I like the most frankly... EDIT: After spending a bit more time thinking about it, looking at the photos on a decent screen, I think that the first version is the better one so I've updated it. As for 2/4/5, I think there are some problems with them, yeah. I'm perfectly comfortable with vistas, but less so with close-quarter landscaping (like in photo #2). It's something I want to work on though, because there's more to landscapes than just photographing vistas. 4 and 5 - it was getting pretty dark when I took them. Four in particular was difficult to balance because of the lighting and the fact the sun's after glow wasn't in-shot (deliberately), but I see what you're saying about #5 in particular where there are a quite a few stray strands of grass. I'd grasped as many as possible (without damaging them of course) and I'd obviously not grabbed enough while balancing on the edge of the water with my shutter release! Flash guns - I've got one, and have access to a second, but they're shoe-mounted only at the moment. I need to get some remote flash triggers, but they're going to have to wait for a while. I'm currently focusing more on natural light than anything else. Still, I feel like I'm starting to get to grips with the new camera and can't wait to get up to the Lake District next week to give it a real test drive!
Hey there, Great photos again Tim, somehow number 3 does it for me also. Also number 2 is quite cool. With what camera were these taken with, you didn't shed light on that subject at all Darkened
I'm pretty sure I said this on Flickr, but the third shot is the winner, by a mile - there's nothing wrong with the others (lovely purple in the last one), but the third one is really terrific. It's the contrast between the leaves, still, having been scattered like confetti, and the momentum of the clouds, that does it for me, I think. There's a real sense of the passage of the seasons, the change from Autumn to Winter.
I also love number 3 I can see what people mean when they can say they can stare at it for hours! If only I had a vertical monitor, that would be perfect!
overall a nice compilation #1 is waay not for my taste. the HDR is too obvious and the colors don't seem very real (i know that its HDR's side effect, but in this case it really bugs my eyes) #2 is a nice take whith what seems like a uwa lens, vut the way you cut those trees at the top really kills the feeling of a closed mysterious forest i'd like to get from this pic. the light is very nice though 3,4,5 are much better balanced. composition wise i like #4 the most #3 for me is nice but the color of the leafs in the water at the bottom part look very unnatural to me, a bit too saturated for my taste, especially the green ones i would love to see some panoramic shots from that area, it really looks like it has plenty of potential
It's not an HDR - one photograph (no multiple exposure business), ND grad filter at the top and I added a bit of brightness back into the trees on the right because they were darkened by the ND grad filter. Thanks for the feedback, it was an ultra-wide angle photo. Maybe my crop was too tight, because I removed the huge glare from the sun along the top edge of the frame - I'll post the full picture in a bit. Thanks; I'm not a fan of HDR, so I'm not using it in any of these photos. I prefer to use ND grad filters instead, as I find I get a truer photo to what I visualised. Occasionally, I do use a bit of tonemapping, but I try not to make it blatantly obvious. On this occasion, I did use tonemapping on a single RAW in photo #3, but I selected one of the presets in Photomatix and made some minor adjustments to saturation in particular (it was too much at the preset).
I'm using a 5D Mark II - recently got it after deciding it was time for an upgrade. I looked at the 40D, 50D and 7D and just decided that I wanted to make the move to full frame. Yes, it was expensive, but I don't regret making that decision - now it's just a matter of learning to get the best out of it!
The dynamic range in #1 does look like it was bumped up quite a bit even some levels adjustments can do that, i guess that weird dynamic range and lack of shadowed areas is what got me confused as for the 5dmkII comment, wise choice if i may say. i myself faced the same problem right after the 7D came out. eventually i decided to save up a bit more and get myself a FF body
nice photos Tim...and you visited Wisley which is just around the corner from here!! nice place right?
Returning to this thread after a while I'll have to admit I think the last one really grows over time.
