Foothill Road, Alpine County, California

[Dan Brown]

I processed this thru Capture NX2, PS CS5 and then flattened and added a Topaz Adjust HDR treatment. Nearly full frame.

Camera Model: NIKON D300, handheld
Shutter speed: 1/250 sec
Aperture: 8
Exposure mode: Manual
Exposure compensation: +1
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 640, auto iso
Lens: 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal length: 56mm
Focal length: 84mm (in 35mm film)
AF mode: AF-C


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[Morkel Erasmus]

I like the composition here Dan, but feel the processing let you down. It's got a very grainy/gritty look to it, especially the mountain and grass detail, and has that typical muddied HDR midtone contrast look.

There's a softness running along the top of the mountains, and some strange artifacts in the clouds top left?
Did you shoot multiple exposures? I wish there was a darker exposure to blend back detail for that burned part of the sky.

Happy New Year and I hope to see you post more in the Landscape forum in 2013 :5

Perhaps you can supply the SOOC file for us to play with a bit? JPG or RAW? The RAW file could make a good exercise for Roger's RAW file thread.

[Dan Brown]

Thanks, Morkel for your critique. After thinking this image over, I probably should have posted it in OOTB. The Topaz Adjust plugin was pretty heavy handed. I will have to revisit the image and process it without the plugin. Thanks again

[Robert Amoruso]

Dan I like the composition with the road acting as a leading line into the image. I find cropping the top bright sky out strengthens it.

A bit different processing approach is needed as Morkel suggests. If you use the Topaz plugin, consider adjusting opacity to soften the affect.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Dan, this is an impressive landscape. Although the HDR treatment is a bit strong as Morkel and Robert suggest, I do appreciate how it makes this scene look like something from a movie scene. Just a little more natural would render a very nice image. Like Morkel and Robert, I'm bothered by the blown out spot in the clouds. I do like the ominous clouds, so I wouldn't crop it of. A trick that might work if you don't have a darker exposure is to create one from the RAW image and blend it in as a pseudo HDR. Sometimes that does the trick.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Dan,
As mentioned good comp. I think if you tweak this with some selective layers and such to smooth out those transitions....this will work just fine!