jupiter Light at Night in HDR Take III

[Harold Davis]

still trying to get the winner at this place. here is one from saturday morning in the rain.

three image HDR tonemapped in photomatix pro.

D300, 18-200 at 32mm, f/16, 1.3s, 5s and 20s, ISO 200.....that would be 0EV, -2EV and -4EV

thanks for looking. comments appreciated.

[Dennis "Curly" Buchner]

Very nice Harold, I was browser cropping and like the image without the dark tree to the right. Like the bridge leading to the lighthouse. Good work

[Robert Amoruso]

Harold.

Interesting take on this image. Nice detail at the lighthouse. I am debating the mangrove at right. I think it helps to balance the imae with the lighthouse but feel it may be too close and dominate. Let's see what others say. Thanks for posting.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Harold,
Took a good look at this one. I appears during the HDR conversion......that you got a halo around the mangrove.......so it wasn't the mangrove that was bothering me as much as the halo. I'm going back to old school......burning and doging......just to show people that the minor PP tweaks still work. I used the burn tool to smooth out the halo around the tree in the sky and water. I then used the dodge tool to selectively bring up some areas like the trees/lighthouse/ parts of sky and boardwalk.
As i was converting it down again to re-post......it looked a bit flat......so I hit it with a bit more H/S and contrast. It still looks pretty natural........but let me know what you think. Oh!!!....I also did burn the mangrove some more to lessen the highlights. I did debate healing/cloning some of them......but felt that worked pretty good.
I do like the way the mangrove makes me feel like I'm peeking around the corner....so nicely composed.
PS....after re-posting.....could have gone darker on the water.
I did have to lighten it some

[Roman Kurywczak]

Here's the darker water with levels layer on it.

[Harold Davis]

thanks roman, the halos were a hundred times worse than the one i posted. i had worked on them for a while. i think that i worked on it so much that i thought it looked right because it was so much better than the original.

big question: is there a way to do this with a single image? HDR has it's place, but i am beginning to lean the other way now. maybe a ND filter tilted diagonally to cover the lighthouse and that spotlight left of it?

thanks to everyone for the comments. all really appreciated!!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Actually Harold.......I was going to mention that! There is no set direction that the split ND need to face......if in this case.....you need to stack 2 probably......but the good news is.....you'd have the results quickly. Very easy to do both at the same time to!....as insurance.

[Paul Marcellini]

I like the comp Harold. The mangrove is not too imposing to my eye. I also lke the overall dark image and Roman's latest post is nice improvement. You can always manually blend, which keeps the natural tonal differences of each area and doesn't mush the contrast like hdr can. Its more work, but if you look at how much you spend for your gear to get better images, what about making them look the best after the fact as well.