Bromo Mountain

[Edy Subiyanto]

Canon 7d
Canon 10-22mm
f/5.6
exposure 1/60
iso-100
focal length 10
handheld

I increase the saturation. I set the picture style to landscape and manually choose the white balance..
actually there is another mountain behind bromo mountain, Semeru Mountain. unfortunately the sky was cloudy.
All critique and advise are welcome..

this is the view of mount bromo, in my country. It's an hour after sunrise..
Lots of people visit bromo to see sunrise and lots of photographer like this place to capture beautiful view...

Edy

[David Stephens]

That sky has some nice clouds in it. You might have tried you GND here to bring the sky's brightness down and bring out some more contrast in the clouds and bluein the the open sky.

I love the scene and your framing with the tree is nice. The tree would have presented a bit of an issue with the GND, because it's exposure is best held constant. This would be a candidate for HDR. I like HDR to expand the dynamic range of the camera, rather than use it as an "effect" like so many do. About two stops down, that sky will show much more interesting detail, to go with the wonderful foreground and mountain.

Now, let's see what the experts say...

Dave

[Lance Warley]

Very dramatic and original, Edy. Nice color on the trees and in the sky.

I'm no expert, but I agree with Dave that this would benefit by a darker sky. Here's a thought - you could try processing the same RAW file twice. Once the way you've done it already, and once for a darker sky, to see what kind of colors/texttures/details come out of a darker sky. This will be tough to blend manually, because of the tree, so it would be good to hit with Photomatix or one of the other automated HDR programs.

One other thing - you might try to lighten up the dark areas -the tree trunk and the bottom right corner. If shadows & highlights don't help, this might be a candidate for a third processing of the RAW before blending with an HDR program.

And lastly, perhaps next time trying to stop down to F11-F16 to possibly increase sharpness in the trees.

I really hope you give the HDR a try and repost, Edy.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Edy, Beautiful light along with a nice view. A few thoughts...the tree on the left is extremely dominant which is keeping one's eye in that area and due to the trees height is causing alot of open,uninteresting sky on the right which is imbalancing the comp.

[David Stephens]

Dave, I agree that the sky to the right, as shown now, is kind of un-interesting, but I think that hidden in there is some very interesting cloud detail, some rich blues and that fog or whatever low to the right. HDR might bring that out and get us to a balanced image.

[Edy Subiyanto]

Friends thanks for the suggestion..

I have edit the pic using photomatic (hdr - set it to +1ev and -ev, then tone mapped) and crop it.

what do you think about it? is it better if I crop the image?

Edy

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Edy,
The repost helped the sky and colors greatly. I feel the tree does imbalance the image....was moving right possible? If not.... going with a longer lens and concentrating more on the mountain and FG......eliminating the tree entirely would have been the way to go...perhaps even with a vert comp. Just some ideas for the future.

[David Stephens]

The sky is much better in balance with the foreground and showing rich colors. I agree with Roman about the tree now, but I'm wondering if you cropped so that the left edge is around the centerline of the tree. I don't think that we need to see the whole tree. If you totally cut it out, then the mount would shift left too much for my eye. I think that with part of the tree showing, in silouette, it won't be so eye-grabbing and we'll look at the rest of the scene and see balance. Just a thought... :)

[Edy Subiyanto]

Roman and David : thanks for your suggestion...
I have tried to crop the tree, as david said that the mountain shift left too much. So i just crop the tree a little bit.. Next time I will take another angle with different shot setting...
thanks for the advise..

Edy

[Robert Amoruso]

Edy,

Saw this one when first posted but got busy and only got back now. I see my original thought is echoed by Roman. The tree on the left unbalances the image.

[Edy Subiyanto]

Hi Robert, thanks for your advice...