St Marks Lighthouse III HDR

[Harold Davis]

here's another view from earlier in the day. 5 image HDR at +1, +2, -1, -2 and -3EV. there was a fair mount of tilt in the lighthouse, so i added some canvas and used the transform tool to straighten. to much halo around the house?

D300, 18-200 at 18mm, f/22, ISO 400, 1/40s was +1EV

thanks for looking. comments and critiques appreciated.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Harold,
Nice to see you exploring the angles! Yeah the halo is pretty pronounced.....blow it up to 400% and clone and patch to smooth it a bit. I like the way the sunburst / path and light balance in the image.....either lighten the LH a touch more or darken the hole in the end of the path.....but all in all a super job composing and blending!

[Morkel Erasmus]

very nice HDR Harold! love the colours, sunburst and perspective.

a great way to get rid of the halo is to paint through to one of the original exposures behind it (if you did a manual blend). if you processed in Photomatix, a great way to handle halos and the 'HDR effect' is to run the same original images in both algorithms of Photomatix (run as details-enhanced and then as tone-compressed). then blend both HDRs in Photoshop until you get the effect you desire, and this should negate the aggrevated halo.

[Rich Ikerd]

I really like the HDR work and the composition with the sun just peeking through in a star-burst, and the path leads one right into the image. Opinion is still out on the steep angle on the lighthouse though.

[Robert Amoruso]

Harold,

I agree with Roman's suggestions and Morkel is right on with the blending suggestion. I have used that method and it works well.