Coldrum Longbarrow at sunrise

[ionian]

I suffer from insomnia - today I decided that if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. So at 3.45am I headed out to Coldrum Longbarrow, which is one of the earliest Neolithic tombs in England, dating from c. 3900 BCE. It's a fascinating site and more detail can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldrum_Long_Barrow

I must have been the only human (alive) in the vicinity, and I listened to the dawn chorus as the sun came up. It was quite a sight. A couple of pictures below for c&c. Is that flare too distracting?I don't mind it but I'm not sure if it's too much. Any tips for removing the big bloom would be appreciated - the dagger would be easy to remove if I wished.

1.




2.



Note to self - put a torch in your camera bag! Trekking for a mile over fields in the dark with bag and tripod with only the led light from my phone to guide me was not wise.

[Shadowman]

Nice capture.

[Sam W]

Nice Capture, did you use the flash? I noticed that the stones are nicely exposed.

[Mike Buckley]

Very nice composition and exposure. I don't know what software you are using, but the flare that apparently would be difficult for you to eliminate would be relatively easy for me to take care of using Lightroom 5 or later. I would be surprised if I would need more than than five minutes. If I wanted the final version to display accurate location of the lichen, it might take me 30 minutes.

I would definitely remove the flare if the image was mine. If it occurred also in other areas of the image, I might change my mind.

[ionian]

Sam - yes, I was using the flash as fill for the back-lit stones. I started shooting 45minutes before the sun peeked over the horizon, and so I was using 30 sec exposures at the start just to capture the sky. A flashlight would have been better than the flash in hindsight.

Mike - how would you do it? Clone and heal? I had a go in Photoshop but couldn't get the edge of the stone to work well. As it's so central, I preferred to keep it in than have a slightly splodgy mess in the centre of the pic. Tips on how you would remove it would be very welcome. I'm an adobe user.

[Mike Buckley]

I would probably use only the Clone tool, as it provides more control. It will definitely be more difficult to get the curved edge of the stone just right than if it was a straight line, but it can be done.

I haven't used Photoshop to do any cloning but I think it would be a lot easier to achieve the final results in this case. That's because you could use two or more layers to "build" the stone to a larger size than you need. You would then use the Eraser tool on an upper layer to precisely define the edge of the stone.

[ionian]

It's not a perfect job but it's not a disaster - after trying a few different methods, I made selections with the lasso tool and used clone stamp. It doesn't look perfect at 200% and I would like to print this one, so I may revisit it when I have more patience. I think this morning I was just over-keen to get it processed and uploaded.

[Mike Buckley]

Nice job. Once you get everything as you want it, it's definitely deserving of a large print.

[ionian]

Thanks Mike. I have a few others to work on from before the sun made its appearance, but I'm not sure that they have the same drama.

[Geoff F]

Knowing where to look, I can just make out a couple of very small points which were left from the flare on the stones. But without knowing there had been a problem in that area, I don't think it would be noticeable.

[IzzieK]

Good edit...before the edit, I loaded your shot in Photoshop and tried to use the Content Aware tool. It did not work. But with a little bit of work, it is possible to use the Patch Tool by moving the offending object to a similar area. You edit here is very good. Better.

[ionian]

Good edit...before the edit, I loaded your shot in Photoshop and tried to use the Content Aware tool. It did not work. But with a little bit of work, it is possible to use the Patch Tool by moving the offending object to a similar area. You edit here is very good. Better.

Thanks Izzie - I hadn't thought of moving it, and I don't think I've used the patch tool before. I'm still learning photoshop, I'm getting more confident with it but I'm self taught from YouTube so there are gaps in my skill set. By zooming right in and carefully making a selection to work within, I found I could make a clearly defined edge. Like you I tried content aware at first, and whilst it's awesome for quick edits it struggles with detail - which I guess is understandable.

[Round Tuit]

Simon,

You did an excellent job on the rocks but made a mistake that I frequently make myself. You concentrated your effort on the hard part and rushed the easy part. I believe that you have the skills to do much better on the portion of the flare over the tracks in the field which are no longer parallel and the section on the far right ends rather abruptly. You may want to fix those before you print.

This is an outstanding shot that certainly deserves to become a large print.

Andre

[ionian]

Simon,

You did an excellent job on the rocks but made a mistake that I frequently make myself. You concentrated your effort on the hard part and rushed the easy part. I believe that you have the skills to do much better on the portion of the flare over the tracks in the field which are no longer parallel and the section on the far right ends rather abruptly. You may want to fix those before you print.

This is an outstanding shot that certainly deserves to become a large print.

Andre

I like your faith in my skills Andre

I agree - being a perfectionist, there is also a branch in the tree near the abruptly ending track that doesn't look right as well. I will revisit this before printing. I'm hoping to put it up in the new house when we move, so I've got a few months before it needs a big print.

[Rebel]

The edited version is much better, nice shot Simon!

[bnnrcn]

Great shot Simon Was the flash enough to lighten the whole FG or did you also take bracketed shots and merge them ?

[ionian]

Andre motivated me to go back to ps, magnify to 200% and get cloning. I think this is much better - hopefully you won't be able to notice much difference unless you zoom right in:




Binnur - certainly in the earlier shots the flash was making a difference, I'm not so sure it was having a huge effect by this stage of the shoot. I also took several bracketed shots but the image presented here is from a single exposure. My initial global adjustments involved pulling the highlights down and boosting the shadows - the shadow adjustment really brought out the stones. The settings are below if anyone is interested - the boost to the overall exposure was mitigated with a grad filter on the sky and a slight vignette.

[ionian]

Here are a couple more from the shoot - I have plenty of other frames but I think I've now worked on the best ones.

1. Before the sunrise - I've given it the "Donald" square crop which works here I think, despite the horizon in the centre




2. Another shot of the sunrise; this required less mucking around with the tree on the right, although I think I still prefer the first image I posted because of the placement of the rocks.

[Donald]

I've given it the "Donald" square crop which works here I think, despite the horizon in the centre

I agree!

[bnnrcn]

Thank you Simon . I asked about the flash because I haven't decided yet whether to buy a speedlight for my landscape shots or not. There are some creative uses of flash in landscape shots and I think I might buy one soon

Andre motivated me to go back to ps, magnify to 200% and get cloning. I think this is much better - hopefully you won't be able to notice much difference unless you zoom right in:




Binnur - certainly in the earlier shots the flash was making a difference, I'm not so sure it was having a huge effect by this stage of the shoot. I also took several bracketed shots but the image presented here is from a single exposure. My initial global adjustments involved pulling the highlights down and boosting the shadows - the shadow adjustment really brought out the stones. The settings are below if anyone is interested - the boost to the overall exposure was mitigated with a grad filter on the sky and a slight vignette.