[jaimej]

These are pretty much my first shots at landscape, any comments or advice would be welcome.

[skipper954]

The first two images suffer because you are taking the photos into the sun. The camera exposes for the sun, making the land too dark. There are ways around this by taking multiple images at different exposures and then using photoshop to merge them. It is a pain.

In the last two images the sky is white, overexposed, and in the last image that made the water and trees overexposed as well. This is the opposite problem. You exposed mostly for the darker land areas, thus "blowing" the sky. (That is a photographic term).

Again, dealing with wide ranges in light isn't easy. If your camera has multiple exposure modes, you might try center weighted and expose on the sky in the last two images.

You should really go out into that kind of exposure conundrum again. We all experience it all the time, and probably have our own ways of dealing with it. So experiment with different exposures and modes if you can, and see if you come up with something that works better.

And hang on this board. You will learn sooo much, it will boggle your mind

skip

[Rob Barron]

Hi Jaime,

I have had a go at adjusting a couple of the pics, one where the sun was over-powering it and putting the rest in shadow and the other which is a decent enough view but was a bit flat.

Ok, the first one I use CS2's 'Shadows and Highlights' tool to try and bring out some of the detail that I figured was almost certainly there. In order to get them to a reasonable level does mean you get a lot of grain and noise so they will never be pin sharp but at least we can now see the lake and greenery a bit there. I used multiple layers and blended them using overlay to get a bit more contrast. I also cloned out the street lamp that was in the foreground. I dumbed the light down a tad but not too much and I cropped it to lose a lot of the dark area on the left and to lose the open sky area with the aircraft contrail.

This is the result of that one:



With the second one, I tried to increase the detail and contrast, must the same was as with the previous shot but without needing to use the Shadows tool. I also put a new sky in as the old one was just completely white and it helps to just have a bit of detail up there.

It isn't perfect and these really were fairly quick plays but I hope you like what is left. You have taken them with an eye for composition despite these being your first attempts at landscape so well done there. The lighting has been fully discussed by Skip and what he has said is spot on so I shalln't add to that.

Hope you get a different perspective or at least see what is possible even if the picture looks like it has almost no detail at all.

Cheers,
Rob

[Dave]

Well firstly what a beautiful place where you live. Some good advice from the boys above, so all I would add is a) don't be afraid to crop shots for more impact & b) with wide angle shots , try to find something of interest in foreground to lead you into the shot if possible.

On this basis shot #3 for me is the fave, as we have the interest of the houses in the foreground against the enormity of the mountain behind.....wiuth Robs PS tweaks, a beautiful shot....well done

[skipper954]

Good pimping, Rob

[jaimej]

thanks all, these pics are in and around lochend,you should see the place from the other sides!