Early Fall in Washington

[Hazel Grant]

Hi, early signs of fall in Washington State. I like the overall shot but am wondering what you think about two things: is there too much sky? and/or foreground? The shot seems to fit the "rule of thirds" but I'd like some input on that or anything else. Thanks.:)

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Hazel,
Welcome to the forum! If you could......post the specs so that I and others may be able to offer more possible suggestions.
This is a tough situation.......the lighting is from the side/back.......which makes it pretty dramatic..........but the FG twigs/bushes.......are quite distracting and maybe moving around would have allowed you to eliminate them. I explored a bunch of crops........mainly to eliminate the FG bushes........but also some from the sky..........because i felt it worked compositionally. for me .....this pano crop is more effective.

I did 2 seperate layer adjustments.........an explanation can be found here (you have to scroll down to my reply); http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=22649
I recommended a linear burn in the link.........I just used multiply layer instead at 65% opacity..and blurred it at 7.5 pixels.
Here's the twist........I selected the inverse (you have to merge the visible layer first)........and then used the same steps........but in the blending mode choose screen (this lightens)...at 30% opacity....blur 7.5 pixels......then I did a LCE (local contrast adjustment ) filter>sharpen>unsharp mask..settings at amount 26.....radius 51......threshold 0.......(playing around with those sliders increases/decreases the efect......you can use amount 20-40....radius 20-60.....Threshold 0-4....to achieve desired results). This still keeps most of the comp in the ROT.......but minimizes a few distractions. let me know your thoughts.

[Chris Starbuck]

Hazel,
You've captured a pretty scene with lots of visual interest, but I have to agree with Roman on the details. The contrast is fairly easy to deal with in post-processing, as Roman shows, as long you've captured detail in both highlights and shadows (and I think you have). Roman's favorite grad ND filter would have achieved the sky/land exposure balance in camera. The real problem for me is the brush in the foreground; it's just distracting. The solution there would have been to move around to eliminate it from the frame before making the shot.

[Chris Starbuck]

Roman,
A question on technique: Where you refer to blurring above (for your mulitply & screen layers), are you blurring the image or the mask?

[Hazel Grant]

Thanks so much for your help and for taking so much time to work on this for me. As you may already have guessed, this type of photo is a new area for me. II can really see the difference in what you did compared to mine. 'll work on your suggestions and get back to you. Again...thanks so much.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Roman,
A question on technique: Where you refer to blurring above (for your mulitply & screen layers), are you blurring the image or the mask?

blurring the mask.

[Robert Amoruso]

Hazel,

You got some good help here from Roman and Chris but I did not notice it mentioned that you can post images to 1024x800 and 200 kb in size. The limits were increased to accommodate the pano forum. IN most instances, members are posting image 800 pixels max in the largest direction (width or height). That will make you image larger in lieu of the 600pixel width you used.

Hope to see more of your work.