Old Grist Mill at Stone Mountain, Georgia.

[Don Chesnut]

Old grist mill at Stone Mountain, Georgia.

[Donald]

As I've written before, I'm not really a big fan of these heavily tone-mapped images that use HDR techniques as the basis of the processing. But, hopefully, that doesn't stop me recognising and appreciating when someone applies the technique very well and produces a good example of the genre.

And no matter the approach to processing, the basis of any good image lies in the composition. And this is a very good composition. There are nice lines curving in from the left (the wall) and the right (the white water). The bridge across the water and teh pathway leading up from it give us a nice line taking us up into that part of the image. And the wheel is successfully made the centre of attention.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Don,

I feel like I am about to be the 'bad cop' to Donald's 'good cop'
All I can do is apologise in advance; sorry.

Whilst I quite agree with Donald about the pleasant composition and it being one of the better examples, the image has some issues which I feel should really have been corrected;
it isn't level
there is significant Lateral Chromatic Abberation (CA) present
I suspect there's also significant UWA distortion, having been shot at 11mm on a 10-20mm f/3.5 lens.

However, I see from the EXIF data that you processed this with ACR 6.5 and Photoshop Elements 10 and unfortunately I'm not at all sure if the more automated CA and distortion fixing controls that are available in CS5 are there for you

However, it could be given the necessary clockwise rotation to get the building corners vertical (always assuming they are vertical in real life of course!) and some manual distortion correction and CA removal is possible in Elements.

Talking of rotation; was the wheel actually in operation, or did you 'give it a spin' in PP?

Was this produced from one shot, or bracketed exposures?

Looking at web pictures of it, winter seems to be a good call to visit, as it gets very shrouded in foliage in summer.

Cheers,

[rpcrowe]

I like the image but, not the HDR effect. If seems too "busy"... My eye keeps roaming the image and doesn't want to stop anywhere...

[elfbob]

This image appears to be spatially flattened from near to far, that's a shame because it apears to have had promise; i'm not a fan of HDR because its like "images on LSD" where the images have to be tweaked excessively to match the "video game mentality" of the newer generation; instead i'd like to have seen this scene captured in 3 exposure bracketed images & combined using Photoshop Elements Photomerge Exposure that can enhance both the shadow & highlight elements of the image w/o the exaggerations of HDR.

[Donald]

i'm not a fan of HDR because its like "images on LSD".

I agree with the sentiment expressed, Robert, as I said above in my post.

But I think we have to be careful with our terminology. I don't think application of the HDR technique is in itself something to be critical of. It's how that technique is applied. Like you, I am not a big fan of the heavily tone-mapped approach used by Don. But many people are. And that's fine.

However, to see HDR applied in the way for which it was originally developed, you need look no further than the series of images that Jeff (escaladieu) has been posting up today. This is one example of that. Now, that is HDR and I love it, as does everyone else who's seen it so far.

So we need to be clear what we mean and need to differentiate between HDR and extreme tone-mapping.

[elfbob]

"Pure" application of HDR to balance the shadow details with the highlights that would be obscured if the camera was metered on the brighter scene areas does what many other applications like PSE Photomerge Exposure does by combining a sequence of exposure compensated images into a single image; it seems that the new "trend" is to overly amplify the "natural" capture because folks perceptions have been accelerated with all the super HD like images so that even a well exposed sharp image appears flat compared to them. Software has evolved to the point where images that I delete on 1st perusal might be turned into a "silk purse" if enough benjamins are thrown at them.