Cape Town Awakes

[Elmar Venter]

Canon EOS 350D
17-40 mm
f8
30 sec
ISO 100

[Dave Mills]

Hi Elmar, Nice light with a good foreground. Since the majority of sky is lacking much interest I would crop out about 2/3rds of it. IMO The image is strengthened using a pano presentation.

[Elmar Venter]

Thanks Dave for the suggestion.

[Robert Amoruso]

Elmar,

Though I like the recrop, I prefer the original. I think the inclusion of the sky creates a sense of vastness to Cape Town that I never experienced before. Definitely a unique view. I like the inclusion of the beach placing you a distance from it and the slow shutter speed to capture that silky water look.

Well done.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Elmar, I like what you did!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Elmar,
As presented I prefer the pano crop but will offer a different suggestion; In the repost I did multiple layers on the sky from brightness contrast to levels and even reduced saturation as I was starting to get banding from working on the small size of the OP.....to try and bring out the details. While I went pretty agressive, You may not do as much but I tried to show you how far you can take the image if you are so inclined! At the very least try Roberts LCE (local contrast enhancement) in his tutorial as that had a big effect.
Let me know what you think.
PS I did run Noise Ninja on the sky after I did all my correction.....you may not have to when working on the original file.

[Elmar Venter]

Wow Roman. I really love what you have done bringing the details out in the sky. I just realise more and more that my post processing skills are seriously lacking. I am going to try and work the same magic. Thanks for your advice, much appreciated!

[Elmar Venter]

Here is my repost based on Roman's suggestions. I did the LCE plus a couple of layers to bring out more detail in the sky. The noise in the sky is a bit of an issue. I just did a noise reduction filter in Elements. What do you think? Do I need noise ninja? When one has noise issues, what are the implications for making large prints?

[Elmar Venter]

Roman, looking at this again your repost has more punch/clarity. Look for example at the lights at the bottom of the mountain. What am I missing?