A View of Santa Monica Mountains from Our Backyard Garden

[Loi Nguyen]

This is my first post here. Full disclosure: I don't know anything about landscape photography, but would like to learn so that I can take some quality pictures on our first trip to Africa in June. I envision that we would be close enough to the wild animals there that I could take pictures with the animal in the foreground and their habitat in the background with a wide angle lens.

This image was taken this morning when I saw a layer of mist covered the valley and the sun began to shine thru a layer of cloud. I took 3 photos -1, 0, +1 EV and combined them in HDR. Honestly, I think the HDR added very little here.

5D3
16-35mm f2.8 II @ 31 mm
1/60, 1/125. 1/30
F18
ISO-400
Polarizing filter
AV Mode
Tripod (cheapo model)
Focus on the rose stem in the middle, about 1/3 up the frame.
Cropped to 16:9 to reduce the sky.

I didn't see a leaf blocking the middle rose, so it kind of ruin the picture.
The mountains and the town below don't look real sharp to me. Could it be the results of the tripod not sturdy and HDR? I just thought about it now and will look at one of the images without HDR and repost.

Thank you so much

Loi

[Don Railton]

Hello Loi

I agree, the HDR is not really necessary here because there is no really bright areas or dark areas that you camera could not capture with one exposure setting. I also agree that the lack of sharp background has turned this into an image of roses on a hill more so than the landscape you were wanting. The trick here is to focus on the hills in the background, and adjusting the F stop to get a DOF that will include the sharp focus on the rose as well.

Finally I think you have too much rose in the frame anyway and I think they dominate the fame, so I would suggest to step back a yard so you see more hills and so the roses dont steal the show... ie adjust the balance between the foreground. I did a quick check on my DOF tables and would guess you need to put about 3 to 4 meters between you and the rose, with similar settings to above. Tripod is OK because the close focus is good.

Nice rose..!!

DON

[Loi Nguyen]

Hello Loi
" The trick here is to focus on the hills in the background, and adjusting the F stop to get a DOF that will include the sharp focus on the rose as well."


Finally I think you have too much rose in the frame anyway and I think they dominate the fame, so I would suggest to step back a yard so you see more hills and so the roses dont steal the show... ie adjust the balance between the foreground. I did a quick check on my DOF tables and would guess you need to put about 3 to 4 meters between you and the rose, with similar settings to above. Tripod is OK because the close focus is good.




DON

I was trying to make a technical picture and forgot that I wanted to show off the mountains, not the rose. Good lesson for me. Next time I will try to focus on the far objects and then get the close-in objects in focus like you suggested. Good idea. Thank you.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hi Loi. Don made some good points here.
I'm glad you're venturing into this challenging genre. Browse through some of the past posts here to get a good footing - where are you headed in Africa?

[Loi Nguyen]

Hi Loi. Don made some good points here.
I'm glad you're venturing into this challenging genre. Browse through some of the past posts here to get a good footing - where are you headed in Africa?

Hi Morkel, we will be spending 2 days in Amboseli and 12 days in the Serengeti in June. It will be an adventure since neither of me or my wife has ever been on a safari. I'm trying to be ready for the trip, but the shooting conditions out of an open roof Land Rover is so much different, so don't know what to expect. Loi