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Don Railton
11-14-2013, 08:11 AM
From a recent trip to New Zealand...Weather was not as I had hoped but I got a break in the clouds long enough to include the distant mountains.

1D4 & 70 to 200 F2.8 handheld from a boat
1/25 sec @ F22, iso 100 don't know why I had F22 and ISO100.. big brain fade I think..

feel free to comment as you wish...

DON

Rachel Hollander
11-14-2013, 09:37 AM
Hi Don - a nice scene and you did well to get a sharp shot with such a slow ss from a moving boat. I'm not loving the very central placement of the sailboat so would crop from the right and from below perhaps coming into about the n in your first name on the rhs and cropping about half of the water below the boat. I'd also try to bring out a little more detail in the sky.

TFS,
Rachel

Don Railton
11-14-2013, 11:21 PM
Hi Rachel. Thanks for your comments and congrats on the moderator position. well deserved IMHO. I almost presented this image as you suggested, but was put off by not having (in my mind) enough 'anchor' for the image. I also wanted to retain the 16 x 9 format. I will look again tonight at your suggestions and I agree the clouds need to loose the blue rinse at the very least...

regards,
DON

peter delaney
11-15-2013, 08:48 AM
Hi Don

I agree with Rachel on crop…. It is an amazing scene, How I wish the sail boat just to be a little more side on…
As Rachel suggested you can work some more on those clouds.. I would desaturate them a tad and the whiten the whites just to give those clouds some structure and depth.

This would make a great candidate for a black and white conversion… mind you I would say that…

Lyle Gruby
11-15-2013, 09:27 AM
Those mountain peaks are definitely impressive, I agree on Rachel's crop suggestion. I think Peter is right, this is a good candidate for B&W.

Don Railton
11-16-2013, 01:55 AM
Hi Guys,

Thanks very much for the feedback. I struggled with the image for some time (especially with the blues and whites) and also the crop. In the end I started again and this time set the white balance to 'cloudy', from then on 'fiddling' with the colour got easy. So the image I have now is quite different but does not have the blue rinse the OP had and I am a lot happier with the result... I have also cropped as suggested and agree its better but I still wish I had of waited a little longer for the sail boat to move off center more.. Finally Rachel I will have to admit I told some lies, when I went back to search for the RAW I realised that this image was taken along with others on a tripod from the shore of the lake, not on the boat. I do have similar images from the boat however and apparently I was having a senior moment during the OP think these were the boat images. This explains the low shutter speed and ISO 100, but not the F22 however...

I have created a B&W version for Lyle and Peter, interested to know what you think..

Don Railton
11-16-2013, 01:56 AM
and here is the B&W..

Rachel Hollander
11-16-2013, 11:44 AM
Hi Don - sorry but for me the colors are much better in the op. Using cloudy as your wb has introduced a yellow cast to the image, perhaps a custom wb somewhere in between might work for you. Personally I would tackle the issues by reducing the blues in a hue/saturation layer reducing the saturation and increasing the lightness. I would also take a look at color balance and adjust the shadows away from blue and towards yellow but only by a couple of points. I would then bring up the whites in a levels layer by bringing the right slider in to taste but without clipping the whites (you may need to mask the boat and the snow at various opacities). Finally a little LCE on the clouds/sky will bring out a bit more detail.

Shout if you have questions,
Rachel

P.S. Just to be clear, I would apply the above adjustments to the OP not the RP.

Andrew McLachlan
11-16-2013, 11:48 AM
Hi Don, I too much prefer the op and think Rachel's crop suggestion will help take it up a notch, or an alternate idea - try moving the boat and then just do a crop from the bottom. It is a lovely scene with the distant mountains.

Diane Miller
11-16-2013, 03:04 PM
Definitely some color issues here -- too much toward yellow in the RP and blue in the OP. I don't know what you're using for RAW processing but in LR / ACR the WB presets are generally worse than just winging it from scratch. Sometimes Auto WB can give you a start.

Here's where I got with a few quick fixes -- brightened with Curves, brought out some detail in the mountains with Nik Detail Extractor (masked just to the mountains), tweaked color Balance but still wasn't happy with it so did a composite layer incorporating those tweaks and did Nik's Remove Color Cast (in Color Efex Pro).

Also did a crop keeping your desired 16:9 ratio. I probably brightened the mid-tones a little too much.

134782

Here's the before, your OP, for comparison.

134783

Don Nelson
11-17-2013, 01:26 AM
Its a little too bright for my tastes, so I agree with you Diane. I like the repost otherwise.

Don Railton
11-17-2013, 04:39 AM
So the struggle continues.... I would like to thank you all for your comments and especially Rachel and Diane for the in depth suggestions they have provided. Rachel, you (or anyone else....) never have to apologise to me for any critique you provide, no matter how blunt you make it... The good news is that I have found another image with the sailboat off further to the right and so I plan to work on that image using the suggestions provided and will make it a separate post.

regards to you all

DON

dankearl
11-17-2013, 11:57 PM
I like the B & W, Don, so there is another opinion for you.