Moraine Lake #3

[Rachel Hollander]

Another view of Moraine Lake in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. Taken at about 7:15 a.m. from the shore.

Canon 7D
16-35 @ 16mm
1/10
f22
ISO 400
EC -1.67
Tripod, 2 stop GND and CP. Levels, selective s/h, LCE in CS5.

C&C welcome and appreciated. Thanks,

Rachel

[dankearl]

Rachel, very nicely composed photo with the Rock FG, and the leading tree line.
One of the best you have posted from your Canadian trip.

[Don Railton]

Hi Rachel

Yes, I like this too and would agree with Dan completely. I especially like the rock foreground. The sky is a bit flatish but I guess it is was it was when you pushed the button...

DON

[Valerio Tarone]

Hi Rachel
nicely composed. The sky is a bit flattish, you should keep on Sh/Hightlights.
Curious that I've shot an image similar last saturday, and the problem is the same. I'll post it within some days, please compare it.

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks for the comments. The sky may be flat but it would otherwise have been blown, it was fairly bright even at that hour so I used the GND and EC to at least get some blue in it.

Thanks again,
Rachel

[Harshad Barve]

Excellent image Rachel , well seen & captured
TFS

[Arthur Morris]

I like the image design. Some of the foreground elements seem less than sharp. I am assuming that you went with the big underexposure to save the sky and then opened up the dark stuff..... Therefore, I am curious as to why not HDR?

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks Harshad and Artie for the comments, much appreciated. Artie - I just haven't done a lot of HDR. I did take some multiple exposures this trip to experiment but this particular location wasn't one of them. In fact, I shot this after coming down from the rockpile and while waiting for my friends before going to breakfast. This was more of a shot I took in passing and I only fired off a couple of shots from this location. Doesn't it always work that way? The ones you wind up liking are the ones that were more happenstance than advanced planning.

Thanks again,
Rachel

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Rachel, I was scared of HDR for years and am now loving it. It is so simple. My friend Pat Sparkman does it really simply: three frame AEB +/- 2 stops. His turn out great. If you do not have a cable release (I do not) use the self-timer. Once the image is set up and the tripod locked simply turn on Live View and you get mirror lock-up. The 7D will take three images at once. Then Photomatix and you will be a pro in no time. If I learned it anyone can.

[Robert Amoruso]

Rachel,

I agree on the image design - nicely done - though on the left FG I would not have had the rock angling down to the lower left corner.

I am concerned about the sharpness of the image. Shown is your DOF and Hyperfocal Distance as it relates to your setup with the 7D, 16mm at f/22. You HFD was 2 feet which if you focused at that location, DOF was 1 foot to infinity. If focused at infinity, Near Limit would be 2 feet. You can make this same calculation at www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html.

The conclusion is that the FG rocks to the BG mountain should be acceptability sharp. Rocks in FG seem to be noticably less sharp then the middle ground of the image. But I am wondering if the issue is not a matter of sharpening combined with DOF/HFD. I sharpened the image and posted it in the next pane. It is oversharpened but selectively sharpening areas will enhance the IQ. Also try local contrast enhancement using USM on BG copy at 20/30/0 to start with. LCE will increase the overall detail of the rocks and trees. Modern filters in Nik and Topaz call this Structure.

BTW, one of the reasons I make a majority of my landscape images with primes is that they have a HFD scale on them and I use that to shoot at the HFD. One of the reasons I am looking at a Zeiss wide-angle for my Canon.

[Robert Amoruso]

Sharpened image example.

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks Robert for the detailed tutorial, very much appreciated. I am always concerned about oversharpening so am probably much more tentative than I should be about applying sharpening. I had however applied LCE to the OP.

Thanks again,
Rachel

[Rachel Hollander]

I went back to the RAW file and played with the WB a bit and exposure and was able to recover more of the blue in the sky. I also applied more and selective sharpening as well as LCE and finally cropped a bit from the lhs. Please let me know if you like this better.

Thanks,
Rachel

[Arthur Morris]

The sky is bluer and I like it better. But HDR is the way to go for these with the huge tonal differences

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Rachel, like the repost better due to the improved sharpening you applied. Very nice composition as well. Perhaps just a touch more sharpening on the upper left corner, but otherwise very nice repost.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Good suggestions given overall here.

If you really want to go deeper into 'exposure blending' as opposed to automated HDR, check out Tony Kuyper's tutorials here:
www.goodlight.us - he sells his blending masks as Photoshop actions so it's quite easy to start playing around with them.

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks Artie, Andrew and Morkel