Tulips with Clouds
by Chad Delany
I took this at the Tulip Festival in Woodburn, Oregon. I was shooting into the sun and used a 7 bracket HDR process but can't remember if I had to use exposure compensation or not.
Nikon D700
14-24mm f/2.8 lens at 14mm and f/22
All critique and suggestions are welcome.
Thanks,
Chad
Comments
17 commentsThe large pic rocks.
I like the way the rows are not so visible. I think this makes the field look more natural.
The trees on the left look a bit HDRish on my monitor but this is no big deal.
Very nice flower shot with a wide spectrum of colors. I like the low angle, it makes the flowers glow. One small nit, the highlight n the cloud in the middle upper part of image is vergingon being blown out.But t's very minor. You inspired me to post my Gorman shot.
Paul
really paid off here.
What day were you there? I was there last Sat and last Weds. Maybe this Tues?
I like your wide angle view on this. Adding to what was mentioned above, I think if you tone down the highlights from the middle clouds, remove the lens flare, and tidy up dust spots, etc, this could be a good runner for the photo contest.
I'll have to post mine so we all can appreciate Woodburn. It's a fun place for flowerheads (like me
BTW, I'm also a mountainhead, waterfallhead, and beachhead (we're lucky to be in OR)!
Kevin
UPDATE: Hope this is OK, but I played with it a little in CS2, and a contrast mask over the whole image, sky selection and hue/sat cyan reduction of 50%, and some selective highlight burning in the bright clouds did wonders to this. Flare and dust spots could easily be cloned out.
Hope this helps.
I'm still getting used to Photoshop. I did use the Topaz Adjust & DeNoise plugin on this shot. Where is the contrast mask you were talking about?
Could you post how the image looks after your adjustments? Thanks for all the help and suggestions.
Cheers,
Chad
A beautiful Tulip landscape indeed. Eye-popping color that still looks great (and more natural) in your repost. Also agree you did a great job in the capture and minimizing the rows and cultivated look we most often associate with fields of Tulips.
Speaking of which, we could have and probably should have moved this to Man & Nature. The structures in the background aren't a big deal and not a major element in the composition, but in general, "cultivated" crops, agriculture, etc. are considered "hand of man." We try and be pretty easy going around here, which sometimes gets interpreted as being inconsistent.... but then also just want to give folks a chance to understand for future postings. No biggie... - and thanks for posting - it's a beautiful image.
Lon
I sent you an email about what I was talking about. Contrast mask, digital grad, hue/sat cyan reduction, local highlight burning, curves, cloning. All of this I came up with when I had Photoshop Elements, so there's no button for the first two items.
Contrast Mask: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast_masking.shtml but I used different blurring values.
Digital Grad: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital_split.shtml. Although my method is different, this will give you a similar result.
Hue/sat, curves, & cloning done as usual.
Oh, I also sharpen with a high-pass fillter/unsharp mask combination to really make it pop.
That's it. I don't do scripts b/c I want to remember how to do it myself.
Kevin
Here is Kevin's reprocessing.