After days of rain and clouds we had a little sunshine yesterday, so I grabbed my camera and took a little drive. This is the deep south US so we don’t get extreme winters, but stuff still dies. Except for the “nevergreen” pines, LOL. I like the three-layer-sandwich composition here, although otherwise it’s fairly unremarkable.
All processing was in ART 1.18.1, with only final web-downsize and JPG export in another program. It was a bit of a challenge to get more-or-less balanced color and tone from a midday harsh-light shot. Also, the cirrus in the sky didn’t help any so I had to “assist” it a bit. Too much? The white clouds to the far right may look blown, but they’re not.
Just minutes before this shot, from the other side of the lake there was a nice reflection-only shot of numerous parallel pine trunks in the glassy-smooth water. As you can see here, that glassy-smooth surface was rippled by a breeze just as I set up for that shot. It never totally calmed again. Oh well, c’est la vie I guess… I tried this one as a focus-stack but too much was wiggling in that breeze.
My version in dt 4.3. Sigmoid and various other trimmings including a masked instance of exposure.
I like this shot a lot, especially viewed full screen as big as possible
I was torn between offsetting the visual weight of the “layers” but ended up opting for a more literal Rule of Thirds composition. But generally I like more vertically asymmetrical layouts like this. Ideally I would have liked to made the foreground the bulk of the visual “interest” but it just wasn’t that interesting…
Aw man… you’re tough! LOL I’m not sure if any of my photos are up to large / close examination!!
Seriously , thanks.
I shot several focus stack series… Shoot one, then remember I forgot to rotate the polarizer. Shoot another one, then decide I like a different viewpoint. Shoot another series, then notice the plastic trash in the shot. Shoot yet another and then decide to shoot a single-frame version just in case.
Drat!!
Then I get home and look at them on my 27" monitor and I was glad I had the single frame version. All the focus stack versions had moving tree limbs, clouds, water, grass…
Yes, a bit asymmetrical and also cutting off the negative space that is just grass.
This way the stones and boughs are coming from the edge towards the lake. I think the foreground is interesting enough in terms of calmness of the whole scene. I like it.
Thanks for sharing this image.
I have done all sorts of silly things in GIMP! Cropped off some of the foreground which I darkened somewhat. Tried to get a little more detail in the darkest areas. Increased the contrast in the water and an increase of contrast and saturation in the sky. All in all I have probably ruined your photograph!
I think this crop could work but would benefit from some green grass, etc. Of course that holds true for all the others, too – Winter time is dead grass time. I’d be tempted to drop the top crop just a tad to remove the little line of sky peeking through, but that’s just me. I actually ‘cloned’ out two small sky spots in ART.
I am not posting this to say I’ve made a good edit, only to show that I just made a personal editing breaktrhough. I studied and studied a couple of weeks ago, trying to figure out how to mask a particular color and change it in a way I wanted to. Based on a recent comment by Boris in another thread, I finally got the epiphany I needed.
In this edit, I focused on changing the green trees and the blue sky. Because of my sloppy masks, other parts were affected, too, but this is just a personal proof of concept.
In my version, IIRC I used a combination of Color Similarity masks to select the colors I wanted and then a Brush mask to refine it. Looks like you got pretty close with darktable, too.
Too much? The white clouds to the far right may look blown, but they’re not.
I’m not sure if any of my photos are up to large / close examination!!
