Niobrara River

[Dale Benham]

Overlooking river close to sunset. HDR. Canon 7D, Canon 24-70 @ 25mm. F/11 ISO 200

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Dale,
The sky looks VG with the HDR work but for me the MG lacks a bit of punch. A bit of contrast there should do the trick. The light ray leading me right and the river are a bit bothersome but I do understand that you wanted to get the curve of the river so a slight tone down in the water as well as cleaning up the whitish bank area on the LL frame edge will help quite a bit. I did look at this as a pano crop to just above the main cloud on the right....and it works but you lose most of the beam......so I recommend only blending in the greyish v in the UR to make the cloudline a bit more pleasing. Yes it looks like an HDR.....but it is a matter of preference and I happen to like it.....so nicely done overall and the few tweaks will take this up a few notches.

[Robert Amoruso]

I like the layers in the clouds and the ray of light makes me want to see the scene to the right that is out of frame.

The HDR allow a lot of detail to be shown which to me gives it a painterly-like quality. I would agree some more contrast in the MG might be worth investigating.

[Nick Palmieri]

Nice job Dale. I find that a lot of HDRs lose some contrast, especially in the midtones. I have found that setting the black and white points in the HDR software, then using Roberts LCE in PS ( http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?20434-Image-Contrast-and-Tonal-Range-Tweaks-Part-1-by-Robert-Amoruso) really pulls the contrast out of the flat HDRs. .

[Dave Mills]

Hi Dale, not much more to add to the suggestions above. The sky is the strength of the image and is handled nicely. Agree with Robert that I would like to see where the beams are going. More contrast would give the image more dimension especially the MG as Roman suggested. Overall, a pleasing image....

[Nick Palmieri]

Did a very quick LCE and this is what I got. I think if you use that and open the shadows your image will be stronger.

[Dale Benham]

Thanks for the comments. I'm learning HDR (using Photomatix) and the comments are very helpful and Nick, the repost is very helpful in visualizing increasing midtone contrast. Nick, you say you "set the black and white points in HDR". Can you tell me exactely what you are doing (seeing in the image or histogram) when you set them? I see the black & white sliders in the Tone settings in Photomatix, but don't know exactely what to set them at. I tried Robert's LCE on PS but my midtones did not respond as well as in your repost. Thanks for any help.

[Nick Palmieri]

Hey Dale, As far as I understand it...The black and white point are essentially where you want the clipping to occur. So if the tone mapping pre-select left some clipping I will play with the sliders to make sure my brightest whites are not blown and my shadows still have some detail. Usually it's only a slight adjustment, if you start changing it too much you may have to play with the gamma or your contrast will really be flat. Regarding LCE, I think for your image I used A - 30 R - 90 T -3 (just played with those settings). Of course I would make sure the original conversion is not clipped first. Everyone has commented on the blown sky areas, but there are also some black shadows which I bet could be saved by setting your black or white points. Hope this helps a bit.

[Dale Benham]

Nick,
Thank you so much for you response - very instructive and it helps me greatly. I'll play with around with some things as I get time over the next few days and see what happens.

[Dale Benham]

Here is my repost based upon suggestions. The sunlight below the clouds is still a problem. Any suggestions for correcting such a problem? Comments welcome.
-Dale

[Robert Amoruso]

Nick,

Great repost. Thanks for helping out.

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Very exciting scene, and fine image, Dale. Personally, I think all it needs is some pop in the trees. I don't think the localized contrast boost shown shown here is working. It just blocks up more shadows. Select the tree area, and use a selective color layer to add punch to the reds and yellows. For the reds, I find adding black and decreasing the cyan helps. Or, with the same selection, simply try a saturation layer and increase the obvious colors. You can also lighten or darken while in saturation menu.