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View Full Version : St Mary's Church, Beddgelert N. Wales



Steve Smith
02-17-2015, 01:08 PM
http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j147/Steve_Smith43/birdphotographers/IMG_0975_birdphotographers_zps9ec8163c.jpg


Canon 70D, EF 10-22 mm lens at 16 mm, 1/500, ISO 400. Taken Sept 18 2014. Is this too closely cropped? Is there enough contrast in the mid tones?

Don Railton
02-17-2015, 11:11 PM
HI Steve

The cropping is OK for me, I do wonder whats off to the right but that's not a biggie for me. I think the contrast in the FG is fine or maybe slightly overdone. I say maybe overdone because the tree left of the church is quite dark and lacking detail and overuse of contrast will do that to the darker areas. What I don't know is what that tree looked like before you started on you PP, maybe its dark before you started, or underexposed overall? However the biggest issue I have with this image is what I think is poor masking around the church top RHS. There looks to be a fog along the edge of the roof and I am guessing its the masking you might have used when adjusting the sky and the BG hills. I think you could add more contrast to the hills using better/careful masking techniques. Finally the sky is a bit noisy, especially visible top RHS, a bit of selective NR would help there.. Apart for the issues I have mentioned, I like the image very much, it has a nice sky and interesting FG.

Steve Smith
02-18-2015, 02:13 AM
Hi Don,

The original image was underexposed to avoid blowing out the sky. The dark tree is a Yew - used to make the English longbows - available to medieval English peasants as a fore-runner of the voter's veto. You are right about the sloppy masking and the noise in the right hand side of the sky. I will watch out for that in future.

Steve Smith

Diane Miller
02-19-2015, 06:14 PM
A very pleasant scene. I could go for a little more saturation, with the grass in the FG excluded from that and maybe darkened a little. This might have been one for HDR. I might try masking the yew tree and lightening it with a Curve (pulling up the middle).

Andrew McLachlan
02-19-2015, 07:03 PM
A nice scene and Diane's repost works best for me, however, I am inclined to suggest that the distant hillside be darkened. For me it is much too light in tone.