Misty dawn in Tuscany

[Gerald Kelberg]

My first posting in this forum, so I don't consider myself a "landscape" photographer, but occasionally find myself in places that I find the light or landscape are breath-taking and I try to capture some of that feeling.

Here the sun breaking through the mist, the ramshackle old Tuscan farmhouse and the fresh heavily dew coated grasses. The sky was bright white and was always going to burn out, as was the sun. I like the balance of the elements and the composition pleases me - probably not to everyone's taste - and the tractor wheel marks leading to the house.

I would be interested to get some thoughts and comments from others how I might have made more of this scene.

Taken with Canon 1D MkIII and EF 24-70mm at 48mm. 1/40s at F/13, ISO 200. Tripod mounted.

Converted in Lightroom then in PS4 adjusted black and white points and levels, reduced cyan saturation -5% to remove a slight cyan caste and cropped. Somehow sharpening didn't seem to be appropriate given the softness of the idea.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Gerald.

[Jeroen Wijnands]

I'm reluctant to critize this because I know how hard these shots are and I don't have any real solutions.

I find the sky, especially behind the house, looking too much like a blow highlight. I also think the house is a bit too unshapr and low in contrast.

What you could have done differently I think is to have just a bit more room on the top and a bit less of grass.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Gerald, Difficult image(lighting wise) to handle. You saw a leading line in the grass and used it to take the eye up to the building. I would have moved over more to the right so it wouldn't be so close to the edge.
You cropped about as much of the sky out as you could without cutting the building or the trees. Adding more sky won't do much for the image.
One can't be sure how this image will look due to the intense lighting. Might have tried a GND on thetop bright area to see if it would tone it down.
In this case the light direction is not working well.

[Jeroen Wijnands]

Wouldn't you lose those sunrays if you added a GND? Really should get mine out for a scene like this.

[Dave Mills]

To be honest...not exactly sure but it might dilineate them better....Takes only a short time to try it...

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Gerald,
I like Dave's suggestions on moving around to get the leading lines into the frame more...especially the RH side. The split ND would definitely work and not get rid of the rays......but I may have stacked 2......stronger one diagonally to the left with minimum grad and softer one on the right diagoanl......just to tame that sky a touch. In this case, a 2 exposure blend or an HDR would probably work best......but not sure you are into that stuff.
all that being said.....I find this image rather pleasing and handled well technically for the most part!

[Gerald Kelberg]

Hi Guys,

Many thanks for your responses and words of encouragement. I have started over with this and hand blended three exposure variations to taste - this let me get more tone into the sky, which helps a lot. I changed the crop a little and cleaned the edge rather than just cropping it - so more on the right and less on the left.
As well as decreasing the cyan a touch, I increased the saturation of the reds and yellows by 5% - giving more warmth and variation to the rays of light.
Also tried a little sharpening - 50%, 0.3, 1 x3 and this seems to have brought out more variation in the texture of the grasses on the left.
Taken it up a step for me; hope you like it.

Gerald

[David Thomasson]

Nicely done. Here's another way you could tweak this in Photoshop without making multiple exposures:

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/7976/dawnset.jpg

For a more dramatic effect, you could use Overlay blend mode instead of Soft Light. The saturation is also a judgment call. Soft Light
tends to boost saturation, which is why I pulled that back.

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/311/dawng.jpg

[Gerald Kelberg]

Thanks David, I will make a point of trying that. Appreciate your response and your ideas.

Gerald