Autumn snapshot

Was driving over land and suddenly autumn did awesome things. So I stopped and very quickly took some multiple exposure shots. There’s no time to loose in these situations because the weather changes so fast right now, that one minute later all the magic might be gone.

Back home I blended all the exposures ( a slight overkill, but I didn’t have much time to choose). The result was already really pleasing and looked almost like the final picture. In RT I just cropped it, added a little more detail and sharpened a little. Done.

Then I had the idea to export another picture from RT with a slightly higher exposure. Mixed those in Gimp and with a very subtle mask I pushed the highlights on the street and the leaves using the brighter exposure.

Finally I did a price worthy sloppy job in removing ghosted multiple cars in the back, which I hadn’t paid attention to before. :blush:

I would be interested what you think about the final result…
The original fused file can be found here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49906761/P1030835%20-%20P1030841_fused.tif

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The blending looks very nice, I can’t tell what’s blended. I do question the inclusion of the bush in your composition though.

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It is nice! No halos or obvious blending artifacts, and the results are very pleasing and very natural looking (I might not have guessed it was blended without being told). I do agree with @paperdigits about the inclusion of the bush (on closer inspection it’s probably the only place with a possibly visible blend issue).

I’d guess it’d be a stronger composition w/o the bush?

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Thanks for the suggestion. The bush didn’t hit my eye until you mentioned it. But it is a good idea. :slight_smile:
So here’s a new crop without it. I also made the dark parts a little darker:

It would be better if the whole street was in the shot, leading the eye through the image. currently my view follows it to the right and then leaves the image.

Edit: I am fully aware that just cropping it with the street in the image will leave parts of the bush in the image. Just saying.

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The confusing thing for me in the photo is: Is the sky the hero or the bush. If you just remove the bush, the photo looked to top heavy to me. There is nothing to balance the brightness of the sun in the bottom of the image. The road seem to cut the image in two with the bottom part giving no useful contribution to the photo. I have a following crop in mind, have a look :slight_smile:

It seems to me that : in this crop, the dark part of the bush balances the brightness of sun, the grass below the road gives foreground interest and the road leads one’s eye to the sun on the horizon. Also, the colours instantly reminds one of Autumn. I think that the reflection of the sun on the road becomes important in this crop.

If I was cropping I would probably opt for something similar to this. Enough of the bush to keep the road in view and prevent eyes from wandering off the image. I think it frames the pretty hills and trees to the left nicely, and leads the eyes right to the sun and sky.

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@patdavid: I would agree with your crop, looking at the different versions this looks the best to me!

@shreedhar: In your crop there is too much foreground for my taste, and that foreground is not that interesting.

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Can I have RAWs?

After looking at @patdavid crop, I agree with you. :slight_smile:

Sorry @mosaster, I read your post and then forgot about it. Do you what all the exposures?
That’s seven raws?

Yep, I’d like to play with them. However, ft it’s too burdesome to upload them - dont bother.