Repost - Fall Stream

LeRoy, your repost is a definite improvement to my eye. I especially like your composition with the creek leading me into the depth in an appealing way.

Peter

LeRoy,

Thanks for the repost and taking the time to consider the feedback. I also think this is improvement, especially in handling the detail in the water and the hotspots, they're gone! And good job with the crop, the comp is improved as well. Overall, the exposure is darker and especially darker on the right. What I think would work here with this image is some selective dodging and burning. This requires masking and painting selected areas, like lightening the shadow areas on the right as opposed to globally adjusting the image. Lots of tutorials on the web and if you haven't already, go get, read and install Tony Kuyper's tutorials and actions. goodlight.us/tutorials

One other comment, which may be obvious. Yes, we can always process our images to correct/improve many aspects of an image. But there is no adjustment or correct though that can correct things like harsh light. In other words, the solution might be to return at a later time in the day, etc. Of course that's not always possible since so many of our images are during a one-time visit and that just happened to be the time you were at the location. And the hot light isn't always bad - as I mentioned it works great for back lighting leaves, but did create heavy contrasts in the rocks and water.

Lon

Thanks to all for taking the time to review my corrections and offer suggestions for improvement. You are correct about the time of day and when traveling with friends one cannot always stay in an area until the light is better. I know the photo is a little dark, but as I tried to change the exposure a little to lighten it, the hot spots began to creep back in.

I do know that the light is something I need to be more attentive of as I am taking photos. Getting better in Lightroom would help too.

Thanks again.

LeRoy,

Today with digital, as opposed to film which I am accustomed to, we had to live with whatever the film captured. If it was harsh contrasty light you had to give up something with film either the highlights to retain detail in the shadows or vice versa the shadows to retain detail in the highlights. In your previous post of this scene, it looked like you had ample detail in the shadows but lost them in the highlights. In this one its just the opposite. If I can assume that you simply re-processed the same raw file for this rendition, I would do a little more work and try to blend the two so that you can retain detail in both areas. You will need to use some detailed masks, like those Tony Kuyper has created in his Luminosity Masks actions, but I think it will be well worth the effort - if for no other reason other than to learn, it will still be worth it.