SoHillGuy Loc: Washington

Critic's welcome..

Original


HDR

SoHillGuy Loc: Washington

Posting problem, and then lost original.

St3v3M Loc: 35,000 feet

I like the original better...

andrew.haysom Loc: Melbourne, Australia

lovely shot of the flowers! What processing was done? Was it a multiple exposure merge? What is interesting to me is that the depth of field seems different between the two images. In the second one the rock and tree and plants in the background look more out of focus. This could be desirable if you want the beautiful flowers in the foreground to be emphasized but is not usually a result of HDR.

conkerwood

I don't think I have ever taken a decent flower shot so I have a lot of respect for anyone who can produce a half way decent pic. And I do love tulips. I like the fact that this pic works in three layers moving your eye forward from darker tonings to white. The eye ends up coming to rest on the one flower which is different, lurking in amongst the foliage. I really like that. As for Andrew's question about DOF my assumption, and forgive me if I am wrong, is that you wanted to blur the background to make the foreground pop even more. This is understandable though to my eye its perhaps overdone a little. I am not sure what processing you used to achieve this but it hasn't quite worked. When seen at the large size, there is a very clear division between the newly blurred area and the original and there are some areas which have not been blurred which should have been. A couple of tulips have also had their upper leaves blurred. But the task was very difficult to achieve. May I suggest that the best way to go is to duplicate the layer and blur the whole pic just a touch. Then layer mask set to show all. Finally paint the in focus area in with the brush set to a feathering of 2 or 3. You probably need to work at about 300% magnification. As I said a real challenge. But to be honest I don't really think you need to blur the background at all, it works just fine as it was.

Hope this helps.

Peter

Bigdee Loc: Southern California

I like them both

SuKai Loc: California

I prefer the original personally. I don't see any difference between the two as far as color is concerned. Maybe the HDR is a tad bit sharper in the floral section but the blur you added to the background doesn't do it for me. I can clearly see a division above the tulips when I blow it up and click on the magnify, it's almost like you have used a layer mask to just bring out the tulips in the HDR. You have an excellent right out of the camera shot I think.

Chinaman Loc: Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Apart from my own work, I don't remember seeing any flower images done with the HDR technique. I may have done so but none comes to mind. So well done.
At the taking stage, I would have avoided the background if possible. As it is, I would blur the background even more or swap it for a plain background. But done more carefully. As the saying goes - 'I can see the joints'. The white flowers seem a bit too bright and contrasty. I visualise the image's attention as the purple tulips and would therefore darken the foreground. At the moment, the foreground of bright and white flowers are taking too much of the attention.
Alternatively, I would crop off some of the bottom (up to the bottom of the 3 white flowers on the left and darken/clone out distracting bits left over)and the top (down to just below the top edge of the large central rock and cloning out distracting bits).

SoHillGuy Loc: Washington

Thanks for all the input. Tad slow on responding as I had been in the hospital for a time.

After looking at the image in a huge magnification I can see the sloppy job of blurring the back ground.

SoHillGuy Loc: Washington

Thanks Peter, I hope I did a better job on this one.

Reworked Photo