In The Beginning

The sky in this is spectacular and an image in itself. However, I find the foreground to be a little too dark and a little busy (personal preference). I think if you just used the rocks as a foreground subject it wouldn't be as static and more appealing. Still though, I like the overall image. Good job on the blend too. Hope you have a great 2012!

The sky here is incredible David. The foreground doesn't do much for me. I feel your pain with the focus blending. It's definitely not easy.

Crazy sky indeed! Think it might be a bit cleaner if you just went for normal seascape w/o the twigs/log in fg as they are distracting. Also seems a couple points oversaturated. Good effort and keep at it!
aF

The detail here is incredible, David. I find it all appealing. This also seems exposure blended. Whatever you did, it works!

Hard to critique the success of a focus-blended image on a technical level here but it's surely going to be a HUGE part of landscape photography going forward and probably one of the most talked-about aspects of post-processing. I focus-blend about a third of my images these days and it can add hours to processing - I know! You'll get faster at it but it's hard to give tips because it works so differently in every application. With sandstone it's just a click of a couple buttons but other times it's 5 hours of painting/cloning/masking at 100%. Here you'd need to start by layering the slightly larger (because of your focal point) background features over smaller foreground features so less edge-work is needed. I think you could get your DOF process down to 20 minutes or less in a shot like this.

The image itself has got some really killer light though I feel the foreground a bit crowded. Good luck!

Thank you for the feedback guys about the busy fg... I'll work on that.
Marc - thank you for your insights into focus blending. I must say the increase in clarity and sharpness seems well worth the pain so I will definitely stick at it, cheers.

David,

What a glorious sky! Heck with the blending and stuff, the sky, clouds and beams steal the show. so much so that the foreground is much less important here.. BUT, the foreground is not taking away anything either so after a few looks, I think I like this and the foreground as presented. Always hard to tell at these small web sizes, but it looks to me like you were quite successful with the focus blending.

Happy New Year!

Lon

I seem to agree with most of the things that have been said. The sky is amazing, but the inclusion of the foreground wood doesn't really add a lot to it, in my opinion.

The pain was worth it - what a great shot, and a great title.

Gorgeous, David. At this size, your efforts seem to have paid off. The top half of the image holds most of the interest for me. I too plan to give the focus blending a try, but it's a little like getting into the gym for the first time

Good shot David and a great job of manual focus blending. Yes it's a pain so I don't do it. Having shot with large format cameras for over 20 years I went a got myself three shift tilt lenses. Soon after going digital. I still prefer to get it in one shot but for some reason these lenses are much harder to focus than large format? Sometimes I have used focus blending in photoshop and some photographers use Helicon Focus but I personally have found that the images produced via software are not quite as sharp as the originals. I hoping that this will be solved in the future.

Dennis - thank you for your feedback. I will be upgrading my camera system soon and have been looking at the tilt shift lenses. I've seen some great results from those that use them, but it's a tough choice between a wider standard lens (eg 14-24mm) and a not-so-wide tilt shift. I haven't used the auto blending function in CS5, but I figure I need to blend for DR most of the time, so I might as well do focus as well while I'm at it. I haven't used HF either because I like to do things manually rather than automated, but I'm always open to exploring new things so perhaps I'll try it.

Geat image David Nothing to add that hasn't been said other than I actually quite like the f/g.

David, This is a wonderful scene! Your comp, the colors and light are all really nice. Those clouds are just awesome looking!

Nick Bristol
Lone Rock, WI

Wonderful explosive light and color from behind the cloud David. Not sure the drift wood adds to the scene but fantastic detail top to bottom of this dynamic scene.

Incredible lighting, colors, etc. This is fantastic! I don't know anything about DOF blending (I guess ignorance really is bliss...), although I would love to try it sometime. Anyways, TFS!