Fall in Western MA

[DanK]

in the Berkshires, looking at the Taconics in New York. Similar to another capture I posted awhile ago, but a little better edited

This was playing with my new OM-1 II a few weeks ago. It's a 3-exposure bracket, handheld, merged in LR merge to HDR because I didn't yet have my exposure blending LR plugin installed on my new computer yet. Not a super polished edit, but it conveys what it was like.

[Round Tuit]

Beautiful scenery. It looks like your new camera will serve you well. With this picture, I find the foreground very busy and somewhat crunchy. I would try to reduce the contrast in the first two layers in the foreground. Here is a quick edit in that direction.

[DanK]

Andre,

Thanks very much. This is a good example of why I hope this forum survives its current technical difficulties. For comparison, I posted this on two other photo sites. I got a bunch of likes on each but no comments, let alone useful critique like this.

I think you are exactly right about the foreground. I'll tone that down. However, I deliberately gave the row of birches pop. IMHO, that's a key aspect of the composition. I actually spent a good bit of time trying different captures to find a few that would allow highlighting that.

Dan

PS: Speaking of technical difficulties, this is my second reply. The first disappeared when I tried to post and the site timed out. That's happened to me a number of times over the past several weeks. This time, I'll copy the post first just in case.

[Round Tuit]

Dan,

It is frustrating. The site worked great for a couple of days at the beginning of the week. I thought that Sean had fixed the problem but sadly it is back to two,three or more tries before we can upload a reply. I keep trying because, as you say, this is the only place that I have found where one consistently gets thoughtful response. I don't want to give this up but at the moment, I think that there are only four or five members in left our stubborn group and we are not likely to attract new blood before the problem with the site is fixed permanently.

I keep hoping!!

[Geoff F]

I like the sky but agree that the foreground is a touch overpowering.

After I type a couple of lines I copy them in case I get timed out or posting a reply fails.

[LenR]

Dan, this is a nice autumnal landscape. I wonder if cropping a little from the bottom perhaps 1/2'' might be the way to go.
Agreed on the Website performance. Managed to access today albeit a little slow.
Kept timing out yesterday......

[Manfred M]

Hi Dan - What strike me here is typical of what we see from HDRI images; they end up looking a bit flat and need contrast boosted.

[DanK]

Hi Dan - What strike me here is typical of what we see from HDRI images; they end up looking a bit flat and need contrast boosted.

Indeed. That's mostly what I did. Here is the original LR merge:



Here's the version I exported from LR to Photoshop, after adjusting contrast, texture, vibrance, color calibration, and a bit more, and sharpening:



And in the OP is the output from Photoshop, without the further edit suggested by Andre. This included 5 layers for local contrast adjustments and a tweak to selective color.

I'm satisfied with the contrast in the top half. I still want to work on the two triangles in the bottom half. Andre's suggestion was a good one, but I'll also play with additional local contrast adjustments there.

[DanK]

Oops. that was ambiguous. I didn't mean "local contrast" in the sense of USM, radius 50, etc. What I meant was local adjustment of (midtone) contrast and other tonality adjustments."

[Manfred M]

Dan - my apologies on my previous comment.

Like you, I am moving to a new computer and while the software side of the transfer worked well and is nearly complete, I am movinig some 20TB of image files to the new system. Given the age of the old drives, I am moving everything to a brand new drive as well as a new backup NAS system (that should arrive later this week).

I'm using an old screen on the new machine and everything looks rather flat on it. When I look at the image on my new screen (BenQ SW272U, which is a 4K 99% AdobeRGB compliant screen), which is connected to my old system, it looks just fine.

[DanK]

Manfred,

No apology needed. Regardless, I do think more tweaking of the bottom half is in order.

I'm also in the midst of moving to a new computer. Very time-consuming and frustrating. I do have my NEC wide gamut monitor attached, but it periodically loses it's calibration. No idea why, since the calibration is supposed to be in the monitor's LUT rather than in the OS.

The installation program, for no obvious reason, refused to recognize my photo printer when attached via USB. After wasting a lot of time, I installed it via wireless, which seems to work.

And on and on...

Dan

[Manfred M]

The installation program, for no obvious reason, refused to recognize my photo printer when attached via USB. After wasting a lot of time, I installed it via wireless, which seems to work.

And on and on...

Dan

Technology is wonderful, when it works...