Tantallon Castle, Edinburgh

[Paul Lagasi]

While on a recent boat trip to Bass Rock near Edinburgh, Scotland the boat went near a ruin, I stood up in the Zodiac Boat, and took 3 bracketed, handheld photos (wanted to try some HDR's), forgot about them until today.
After doing some internet research, I found out the name is Tantallon Castle, which was destroyed by Oliver Cromwells invasion of Scotland.

Today I downloaded the trial 30-day HDR software "Photomatix" and worked on the image. This was the result. Comments welcome.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

This looks more like a painting to me than a HDR. It reminds me of those fairy tale scenes.

My question is did this scene need an HDR?

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Paul Lagasi]

Probably not Sabyaschi, this was just an experiment...maybe it should be in another forum...
thank you ....fairy tale is what I was going for, Harry Potter, type of feel.

[Robert Amoruso]

Paul,

One thing to watch out for is the haloing around the castle. You need to use more light smoothing to lessen that.

[Rene Quenneville]

Interresting image. I feel ther was a need for HDR between the cliff and the sky tonal difference. Robert is right, light smooting is key here. Apart from this slider, I always position my white point, my plack point and my midtones in order not to clip but to make a realistic look. At this point may look some what strange in the mid tones. After that, I adjust the final image in PS with a curve adjustment and color correction if needed.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Paul,This one isn't working for me as either an OOTB creation or a straight landscape. The comp is very nice......but the mentioned halo is too drastic. Nice advice given above on how to tame it too. I did try a levels layer in just the sky.....so if you can tame the halo......you can bring that up rather nicely. I think this was handled well compositionally.....especially from a zodiac.......so bonus points for that but this one needs a bit of work as presented.

[thijs broekkamp]

NIce scenery!