Graham Thirkill Loc: Idylic North Yorkshire, England UK.

Looking out to sea from our back garden this morning about 9.0am. There was heavy cloud overhead but looking out to sea, it looked great, as the sun was breaking through the thinner clouds making lovely bright
patches on the sea. I tried a few different settings and took about ten different shots but this was the one I thought was the best. I have not captured the scene have I. ??? Any ideas, as this occurs regularly and I would like to do better than this...........

Thanks in anticipation........... Usual Cheers and Beers Graham /098\

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John N Loc: HP14 3QF Stokenchurch, UK

Looks like a time to use HDR. I know the light can be very wishy washy here in the U.K. at times but something else to consider is the possible effects of the Californian Wildfires.

The Smithsonian reported yesterday that its effects had been monitored in the Netherlands, a Northerly Jetstrem keeping it away from the U.K., but I believe that is changing this weekend.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

John, I think you hit the nail on the head. HDR would do very well here.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

I just ran your image through the HDR feature built into Affinity Photo, and I think you would like it. Now, if only I knew how to upload an image here, I'd upload it. But I've never done that before.

RogStrix Loc: UK

have you tried it with a Gradient filter fitted to your lens?

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Lighting for this subject is difficult. You have used 1/60, F22 and Flash. Flash for the stone wall?
Using Affinity auto adjustments and the haze filter, and staying away from HDR, gave me the following. Perhaps HDR would do better, but might posterize the result? it would be good to compare both.

PS - below my first stab is another possibility - but neither of my offerings please me.

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CO

In the normally exposed photo, the window light is becoming over exposed. I bracketed three exposures and merged them in Photomatix Pro HDR for the lower shot. The walls have roughly the same exposure and the over exposed windows are improved. It's best to use RAW files for HDR.

Compare the windows in these shots.

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Graham Thirkill Loc: Idylic North Yorkshire, England UK.

Another version by Marg, who I am very grateful to, also, thanks Marg, I am chuffed to bits \pleased as punch in English/ with all these alternatives...

Cheers and Beers, Graham \098/

Marg Loc: Canadian transplanted to NW Alabama

So glad you liked it, Graham!

ecobin Loc: Paoli, PA

Hi Graham,
I used several layers in Affinity Photo:
First an HSL adjustment layer to increase saturation 8%.
Then I masked the sky and applied the mask to a Curves layer and lower the exposure significantly.
Then I applied another Curves layer to the entire photo and lowered the exposure slightly so that it looks like early morning.
That's all I did - much more can be done to get it close to what you saw. I hope this helps.

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Tinker

You didn't mention whether it is a pano or not...it seems to me that if you have enough open area to make it wider the effect would be a more dramatic. Still, it really captures the feeling of the sea, at least for me. Beautiful shot, and having that view all the time must be wonderful.

Graham Thirkill Loc: Idylic North Yorkshire, England UK.

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Thanks Delderby, I thought the shot should be better than I could do and it certainly is a lot better.

If anyone else would like a shot at it, I would be most grateful. We are never too old to learn........

Cheers and Beers Graham 098

CO

I'm sorry but that's a terrible quality conversion. You can't wrench around on a single .jpeg file and expect good results. RAW files contain much more information than .jpeg files. If you bracket RAW exposures, there will be far more information to work with. The upper portion of the stone wall in the foreground is much brighter than the lower portion. The big thing with the photo are the black clouds. Look at the example.

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Graham Thirkill Loc: Idylic North Yorkshire, England UK.

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Thanks for your comments but I like Marg"s version. It showed me what one can do and I have learned from her much welcomed version and I am very grateful to her for taking the the time to help me........it is far better than my feeble attempt.

Cheers and Beers Graham \098/

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The ideas above for HDR are ways to accomplish what you can also do in editing on a single image assuming you expose for the highlights and adjust the shadows on the computer. Two (three?) camera settings need to be addressed to assure you capture the best image from the camera with the expressed plan to edit the image later:

1) Don't go so small on the aperture. All all-over sharpness for this image can be accomplished at f/11, maybe focusing on the wall in the foreground or no further than the small white shed in the middle distance.

2) Consider metering the entire scene in Canon's evaluative metering.

The #3 idea is to capture in RAW, if not already being captured in RAW. The goal of your exposure is to find the exposure where the sky just stops blinking in the highlight warning with no 'concern' about how it looks on the camera display other than the highlight warnings. Whether you use a flash to try to fill-in the foreground is your decision. The key point is to get the sky as bright as possible without blowing the highlights there.

If you take 3+ images in HDR, or artificially create 2 more images in post for HDR-input, or just edit a single image, you can adjust the shadows to balance the sky in post and achieve a better result. Assuming the sky is just below being blown, you can adjust the brightness there too in post, adding blue, gold and orange as desired.

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