vahleru Loc: Northern Kentucky

I think I have found a new love! This HDR stuff is a riot. I have been reading the Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography by Ferrell McCollough and thought I would put some of his techniques to the test. So please tell me how did I do for my first one?

Fiance' family farm

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

Saturation is okay, but the colors are not quite true.

conkerwood

Hi
For a first effort not bad at all and by posting here you have the chance to get some really good advice because there are a lot of people who know what they are doing and are willing to help. So a few suggestions.

#1 I agree with Nikonan72 that your colours are not true, one of the traps when you first fall in love with HDR is to push the colours too far, by all means make them pop but they need to look real.
#2 Whether its HDR or any other form of photography, you have to get the basics right. All of the buildings are leaning to the right which means that you haven't adjusted your horizontal. For me its one of the very first steps in your workflow and its such an easy fix. Get the horizontals and verticals right, even the best HDR can be ruined by the distraction of sloping buildings etc.
#3 If you look inside what I presume is a barn and in a number of other areas you will see that its all black. HDR is about bringing out the details in the shadows and the highlights. I don't know what software you used and thats an important detail to include when you post so we can advise on specific settings but there will, I presume, be an adjustment which will allow you to pull the blacks back so that we can see the details.
#4 Much of the area at the front is OOF. Yes this is a depth of field artistic decision but HDR does not deal kindly with OOF areas, it tends to make them look even more blurred and a little overpowering. So its a good idea to think carefully about your DOF so that you don't have large OOF areas particularly in the foreground.
#5 HDR, as a process, tends to reduce contrast so that it needs to be adjusted in PP after the HDR merging. Also HDR really needs to be sharpened after processing. But (and by writing this I am recognising one of my own weaknesses) don't over sharpen. Its a fine balancing act.

So if that sounds like a lot of negatives its not meant to be. I go back to my first statement, 'For a first effort, not bad at all.' I have kept my first HDR and it is really cringeworthy, you are way way ahead of that. Well done and let's see some more of your stuff.

Hope this helps

Peter

vahleru Loc: Northern Kentucky

Thanks guys for the feedback, it is always helpful to get input from folks who know what they are talking about. I used Photomatix & LR4 for PP. I have to admit, I didn't do much PP in LR because it seemed to change it so much that it didn't look painting like if that makes sense. My setting were follows:

ISO 400
44mm
lens 18-200mm
f/7.1
1/400 sec
Apeture Priority

Jusoljoe Loc: Texas

In lightroom 4 using the color dropper in the Develop module on the white house in the shot should produce a good white balance for you. :lol:

conkerwood

Am I reading this correctly, that you only used one shot at 1/400 or were there bracketed shots where 1/400 was the 0 shot. If it is the case that it was one shot I want to encourage you to get into bracketed shots right from the beginning so that you really are expanding the dynamic range. If you need help just ask.

Peter

vahleru Loc: Northern Kentucky

Oh I'm sorry, I did do bracketing on d7k....3 shots @ 2 stops each end.

Chinaman Loc: Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

You did great for a first try, vahleru. You didn't fall foul of the 'overcooking' trap that most others do. Did you shoot this in the evening? That would account for the warm tones and it would not be out of place. Perhaps the saturation is abit much for others, but it is OK with me. And the slant is so slight to the right that it again doesn't trouble me. Even the out of focus plants in the front doesn't faz me. In fact I prefer it out of focus as it lets me concentrate on the buildings. Gosh, I feel so calm and untroubled today.
But wait....
If you have ever read my other posts, you would have cringed at the number of times I have suggested cropping an image to improve the composition. Well, you will not escape my nagging! If you crop the top at where that black dot (?bird) is, you'll see a great difference.
Well done again. And take good note of what Peter says.

SoHillGuy Loc: Washington

I believe you could have had a much better photograph if you had used an ISO of 100 or 200. For a still life you did not need to shoot at 1/400 of a second. There is some noise apparent which could have been reduced with the lower ISO. It would have also increased your DOF.

CanonFire Loc: Phoenixville, PA

You did pretty well. Nice soft focus on the field and good sharp focus on the barns. The colors are a bit oversaturated, but not annoyingly so. The shadows inside the barns are so black you've lost detail. the black lines on the 2 trees by the red truck make them look a smidge "grungy". There's a good bit of color "noise" in the sky that could be removed or softened in Lightroom with the color noise reduction tool. There's a bird in the sky above the tall tree that should be removed. The bird is not in focus or detailed enough to add anything to the picture, it's more like an annoying dust spec. I'm not seeing the buildings leaning to the right to any annoying degree so I wouldn't worry about that.

If you were trying to bring out the dynamic range of darks and lights in the photo, I'd have to say you overprocessed it. If you were going for an artistic, "painterly" look, you succeeded. It's got that "autumn on the farm" painting feel to it. It's a beautiful, serene sight setting. I'd hang it on my wall as is. You can almost hear the breaze. Not bad for a first time.