Englands green hills

[Stuart Hill]

Shot this today at a limestone outcrop in Yorkshire, UK. Trying to work on better landscape comps, tonal separations and b&w pp'ing in ps.

Any critique welcomed.

kind regards.
Stu.

[Chris Ober]

I like the B&W look. Nice cloud detail too and it's quite a view you have there. I think it's too much foreground and might crop a third off the bottom (to the bottom of the middle row of rocks)

[Joe Senzatimore]

Very dramatic sky and beautiful tones in the image. My vote for some crop off the bottom.

[Bob Miller]

Hi Stu....very nice tones here and composition also. i would agee with cropping from the bottom ..that makes the lines of rock more prominent as leading lines. i think I would also like to see some stronger blacks in the foreground

[Morkel Erasmus]

nice scape here...for my tastes the B&W has too little tonal separation and it's a bit "all grey" if you know what I mean. I would take the original and try and get the most out of the histogram, making sure there are representative values throughout before conversion as you also don't want to induce tonal range through massive contrast boosts (although I dig a contrasty B&W photo, I too have limits).

maybe it's just me but I am yearning to see the "green" mentioned in your title contrasted with a blue sky :)

[Stuart Hill]

Thanks for the help. Will have a go at the crop and another conversion tonight.

kind regards.
Stu.

[Robert Amoruso]

Stuart,

I like the comp and would not crop. For me in a vertical image like this that is trying to convey depth, I like to be able to feel I am looking down at my feet and then raising my head and following the lines of the scene (in this case the wall and ridges in the rolling hills) out to the BG. I feel you captured that well here. The grasses in the immediate FG and soft and not strong enough visually to hold the eye which is what you want. Of course that is my opinion. ;)

Please share the technical information in future posts and if you will, please edit the above to add it here.

I do see what Morkel is saying and agree. You have pure black and pure white but it seems flat. In the repost I did two things, curves adjustment preset - linear contrast, and then shadows.highlights adjustment and tweaked the shadow, highlights and mid-tone contrast settings to ilk out a different tonal arrangement. And certainly not the only way to do it. If you have NIK's Silver Effects, try that too.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Stuart, not much to add except I don't feel a need to crop the bottom in this case. I also happen to like the OP and Robert's version. I'm not trying to be diplomatic but I like them both in different ways.
One thing that I try to avoid(am not able always) is not to have contrails in the skies.There are some remnants on the upper left.

[Robert Amoruso]

Hi Stuart, not much to add except I don't feel a need to crop the bottom in this case. I also happen to like the OP and Robert's version. I'm not trying to be diplomatic but I like them both in different ways.
One thing that I try to avoid(am not able always) is not to have contrails in the skies.There are some remnants on the upper left.



I always like them there PUNCHY B&W images. ;) As I mentioned, the OP had all the requisites down, pure black and pure white in small and appropriate places, and the histogram had a nice bell shape showing good distribution of the tones. I should have said "subtle" tones and not "flat".

[Stuart Hill]

Nik silver effex on the list of things to buy! Until then, conversion manual. Unfortunately not a chance of missing those contrails in this area, except maybe a really early start! But understand.

Robert, thanks for the help. Gone for a slightly different conversion using selective color, multiple curves through alpha masks which were then set in a group and selectively painted in using a mask on the group if that makes sense.

Thankyou to all for your help. Your critique is very much appreciated.
regards.
Stu.

D300 + 17-50 VC Tamron
ISO 200
F18@1/100s - 1 ev

[Bob Miller]

Stuart....i like the crop and the foreground now looks better with more blacks but I feel that the midground is now too dark.IMHO

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Stuart,
I do think taking the crop up the FG would strengthen this but the OP is good too......and your last re-post is the strongest tonally. I agree with Bob on the MG tweak to further take this up a notch. Nicely done overall.

[Stuart Hill]

Well you've given me lots to tackle and think about in future projects. Thanks again for all taking the time to post.

regards.
Stu.