An unnamed waterfall, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand

[chris Bycroft]

A waterfall in a remote part of Fiordland National Park, South Island, New Zealand. I took along my Canon G10 instead of my usual SLR because of weight on a multi-day tramping (hiking) trip in the backcountry. This is an HDR image using Photomatix Pro 3 with three images (one stop apart each). The photo details are 1/2 second at f8 at ISO80.

Cheers,

Chris

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Chris,
I like the contrast and framing of the lush greens against the water. You may have a few hot spots on the whites.......could be from the jpeg compression.....but it could be from too much contrast too.....so I'd check that. Very nicely composed.

[Tom Walter]

Chris,
Great composion and a wonderful scene. The rocks and moss seem unrealistically bright to me, especially at the top left. Perhaps this is what Roman was talking about.

Tom

[Robert Amoruso]

I really like the FG water flow and how it contrasts with the less defined (in a good way) falls. The bottom water action makes this image looks bottomless to me. Well done. Agree with Roman on the hot spots in the falls.

[Paul Marcellini]

Great view, I like it. The hdr is well done too. The main thing that catches my eye are muddy whites in the splash zone. I feel hdr muted them too much. Looks like it could be sharpened a touch more for web.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Beautiful place & a beautiful falls. Simple & neat composition. Might sharpen a bit more (the rocks on bottom-left look a bit too soft).
Am curious to know about the ghosting challenges (if any) encountered with HDR of this image. I am very interested in trying out HDR on waterfalls but have always felt that it might not render the result properly due to difference in water forms, shape & flow in successive images.
Thanks for sharing this image.

[chris Bycroft]

Thanks for all of the useful comments. I am fairly new to HDR and I was unsure how it would work with a waterfall. I did tone down the the hotspots in the waterfall in lightroom, but any toning down tended to make them go grey -so this was probably a contrast problem that Photomatix (or me) could not deal with. Not sure if there is a better way of controlling that, or even processing the image differently in Photomatix.

Kaushik, I did not have any major problems with ghosting of the waterfall itself, but did have some problems with the edges of the chasm.

[Rich Ikerd]

Excellent image Chris - the waterfalls of Fjordland are wonderful and you've really captured their essence here. The HDR work is pretty good as well - even with a few hot spots in the water. I really like the composition with the sides of the canyon gives a nice frame.