The Quiraing

[Jerry van Dijk]

A happy new year to all of you! This is my first post for 2017, from my trip to Scotland last summer. I must say that this was one of the most impressive landscapes I have seen so far. Apparently the result of a massive landslide a long time ago. I decided to leave the hikers in to give a sense of scale.
Three image HDR merged with Photomatix Pro 5.0 and further tweaks of contrast in CS5.
Nikon D7000, handheld, Tamron 16-300 f/3.5-6.3 @ 16mm, ISO 200, f/16, 1/125s, -1 EV

[Don Railton]

Agreed.. very impressive landscape..! Not sure if this was possible but I might have tried to get that pathway to continue around to the walkers by stepping to the right (or going back) a little. That may have hid the road also, not that is a biggie to me. You have a couple of dust bunnies above the RH lake just below the cloud, and i might try a bit of selective sharpening on the rock face below the walkers.

regards

DON

[Jerry van Dijk]

Thanks for the feedback Don! It was vey busy on the path, so very little room to maneuver without getting people in the way. I think the lack of sharpness on the rock is due to the heavy jpeg compression that was needed to stick to the maximum file size. In the original image it almost looks oversharpened. I find that HDR often results in much sharper looking images than the original ones. Probably due to the (micro) contrast boost.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Jerry....good call to leave the hikers in for a sense of scale on this lovely landscape scene. Good call by Don on the dust bunnies...do I see a contrail between the two central peaks? I would be inclined to clone that out too. I would also suggest toning down the brightness of the clouds in the upper left area as they look to be bordering on blown out. Very nice scene.