The Pinnacles...

[Jerry van Dijk]

... in Nambung National Park, W.A. The area is covered with oddly formed sandstone pinnacles emerging from loose sand. The origin of the pinnacles is still debated, but probably includes some form of concretion of calcium around plant roots in a distant past. Blend of three exposures with 2 stops differences in Photomatix Pro (still didn't find the time to get into the manual blending :S3:). I'm still new to the whole blending thing, so any comments or suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 16-85 @16mm, handheld, ISO-100, f/4.5, 1/320 sec (0 EV specs).
Desaturated the colors a bit for a more natural look, cloned out some lens flares in the FG and in the central cloud. Left the ones in the sky in, because of the sunrays around the cloud it was too difficult to remove them.

[Don Railton]

Hello jerry

Your blending looks good to me except for the central cloud which looks a bit too hot on the upper edges.. Not sure what you can do about that as i am pretty new at blending as well... The colour of everything else looks about right to me...

DON

[Jerry van Dijk]

Thanks Don! The edges of the cloud are indeed too hot. I'll have to check the original images to see whether the darkest exposure contains any detail in those regions, otherwise I can't do anything about it. Shooting conditions in WA are certainly more difficult than here in Europe! Harsh sun, spectacular but very white clouds and a bright blue sky. I had to use exposure blends for many of the images from the Pinnacles to get good results.

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Jerry,

overall looks fine to me. Did you try the content aware fill for the lens flares just under the cloud? Would try that, if you want to get rid of them!
Watch the horizon if it was not going slightly down the hill on the left side! I might would crop out the green bush of the left side to shift the pinnacles a bit more to the left. Just IMHO :S3:

Have a great week

Ciao

Anette

[James Fuller]

I might have shifted the lens to the right to get the pinnacles out of the center and to get the rest of smaller rock in the frame. Maybe taken a couple steps to the left as well, to get both rocks off the same plane, creating more depth in the foreground and moving the light angle a little off center. Hard to know though, just an idea. Blending is addictive, keep at it!

[Jerry van Dijk]

Thanks everyone for commenting! I tried a crop from the left to off centre the rock (and the central cloud), but didn't like the result. I can't recall the scene good enough to judge the possibility of a different angle. What initally drew my attention to this scene were the shadows of the rocks radiation from a central point. I took that as the basis of the image.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Jerry, I like the comp as is and nice work with Photomatix. I like the symmetrical balance with the formation centered the way it is. I wondered how it would have looked with the cloud centered above the formation. Nice work!

[Morkel Erasmus]

Jerry while I don't mind the central placement of the pinnacles here, I wish the entire rock on the RHS was included in the frame.
I would also suggest a pano crop from the top as the cloud and harsh sunlight beams distract me a bit.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Meant to add - good work in getting a natural-looking result with Photomatix... :5

[Jerry van Dijk]

Thanks everyone!
Morkel: I found that when I stick to the exposure fusion option in Photomatix, it is very well possible to get natural looking results without much additional work in photoshop afterwards. But I'm going to learn the manual blending too, given the great results presented here in the forum. I tried your crop, but found that the result lacked a bit of interest.
Anette: no luck with the content aware fill. I must confess that it has never worked for me.