Waterfall

Crop perhaps?

I agree with the crop. Getting rid of this guard rail would really make this photo postcard perfect.

A little bit of burning here would be great. Should be easy, as you have the full bracketed set.

Same here. Burn this a bit to get rid of the blown-out highlights and bring some texture in. As this is the brightest area of the shot, it's distracting.

Tews Falls, near Hamilton Ontario on a trip with the Toronto Photography Meetup Group

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Comments

Mike Seliske says:

I Really like this one!

--
Seen on my Flickr home page. (?)
Posted 6 weeks ago. ( permalink )

JeffTKrol says:

What a refreshing HDR picture!

(You're on reddit: photography since you did it so well, without overdoing it.)
Posted 6 weeks ago. ( permalink )

_richter says:

Hello Reddit as well~ Subtle HDRs are awesome.
Posted 6 weeks ago. ( permalink )

Grums says:

Another reddit comment:
This is how HDR should be used. Could you please geotag it?
Posted 6 weeks ago. ( permalink )

emanuelez says:

Another Redditor:
Lovely!!!
This is my attempt to achieve the same result... in a much less successful way! :)

www.flickr.com/photos/emanuelez/3706449411/
Posted 6 weeks ago. ( permalink )

lytfyre says:

Grums: I've geotagged roughly where it was. It's a bit of hike in from the road, and I didn't have a GPS logger, so it's hard to get exact.
Posted 6 weeks ago. ( permalink )

First thing I have to say is that this is a well done HDR! the color and detail in the waterfall and foliage are excellent. Am I right in guessing this was generated from a single RAW file? The aperture and focal length are perfect for what you are trying to achieve, keeping as much of the frame in focus as possible. Can't see the shutter speed in the EXIF data, but judging by the iso & f-stop should be around 1/25 (I'm sure there is an equation out there I should look up for this..) Technical aspects of setting up the camera seem spot on.

That being said, the qualities of HDR that really bring out the detail in the water and the color in the leaves also cause a large black zone in, what I'm assuming, is the guard rail. The only thing I can think of to try to prevent this would be to lean over the rail and take the same shot without the rail in the frame. That or perhaps crop the photo to remove all but a hint of the guard rail. This would still let viewers of the photo know it was taken from a trail while retailing all the focus on the waterfall.

My 2 cents anyway. Overall I quire like this shot and the processing, Well done!

All that being said, over 3,000 views, extremely well done!!

Posted 24 hours ago. ( permalink )

lytfyre says:

POD: It's a multi exposure blend. shutter speed was varied, to get a silkier waterfall, but were fairly long (longest was 1/3 of a second), which meant I needed a tripod, and couldn't get close enough to the edge to get the rail out of the frame.
Posted 24 hours ago. ( permalink )

- POD - says:

Ahh I see, thanks! Then maybe place 2 legs of the tripod against the rail with rocks (or other wight) to support them and the last leg extended to give balance??

Just thinking out loud. I really think it is a great shot, I was just trying to think of constructive feedback.
Posted 23 hours ago. ( permalink )

CalebPhotographer says:

The exposure on this photo is just wonderful! It's a perfect HDR, in my opinion. It turned out much better than the regular HDR which looks cartoony and fake.

The composition is good, but the one thing that bothers me is the railing that is in the photo, on the bottom right. If you would just crop it out I think this would be perfect.

Posted 22 hours ago. ( permalink )

Stephen Newport says:

The exposure on this image is perfect, and it is already a good image!

First off, if you'd like this to be an image to hang on the wall, I think you should either crop out the rail or edit the bottom of the frame to gracefully fade into black (which, if done correctly, could bring a lot of focus into your image). Careful though, many who do this end up making a very unnatural or banded black hole in their images.

After the rail is dealt with, I really think this image would benefit from some selective dodging and burning. I think it's a common thought that dodging and burning is only relevant to black and white photographers. But once you start bringing out the glowing edges of moss against the stark sandstone in key locations that lead your eyes to the falls, you'll see what i mean.

Softly darken the stone around the left edge, under the moss and leaves. Then highlight the leaves and moss (and edges of the stone facing 'up') to create some nice natural contrast. Darken the lower left-hand corner and just pull out some of the highlights in those lower left leaves to give some motion diagonally across the values in your picture.

The key to doing this is to not use the 'dodge' and 'burn' tools, they don't work very well and will tend to be too dramatic. What you want is to edit invisibly, so when someone sees it they see the image first and not the edits. Instead, duplicate a layer and apply some universal edits you want, then mask them on top of the original. This, for me, gives a much more uniform and appropriate look. (just be careful to keep the saturation under control when you edit the values, desaturate a bit if you need to)

Here is one of the best waterfall shots I've ever seen.
www.josefhoflehner.com/iceland/02.html
(there's many more falls shots on his site) look it over a bit...

I'm assuming that at first glance it just came off as a very dynamic, wonderful shot. Upon further inspection you can see why. Everything in this shot was refined to bring your eye to the falls. The darkness coming into light on the left, top, and right sides, and the leading perspective in the pebbles below. The things that give that image bite are things like the darkening of the top cliff edge to simulate how we'd see it with our own eyes. The gradual increase in highlight detail the closer the rock gets to the falls. The value change from the top of the falls to the bottom. These are all things that you can take and apply to your image and see what works.

What your image is lacking is clarity. Just by the subject matter, anyone can tell that the waterfall is the subject, but your eyes and mind do not instantly grasp it. Really sculpt that rock like a painter would, and edge those leaves in like Ansel Adams. Darken the edges and gradually bring the detail and highlights towards the falls. Make a halo of gradations and transitions (detail, values, color, focus) from the edges of your image to your subject and I think you'll be pleased with how much more it pops!

Message me if this needs any clarifying!
Nice image, and good luck editing!

Posted 22 hours ago. ( permalink )

Yovo Photo says:

nice colorful image.

I agree with most of PODs comments. The railing really detracts - since the railing is stable you can use that as a leg or maybe a good use for a gorrilla pod - they are relatively cheap and easy to carry.

You HDR processing i the ones is well done. The difficulty, with long exposures and foliage can be seen in the larger image. There is a large amount of movement & blur in the leaves and plants. I haven't been able to overcome this myself and it is a limitation of HDR. Perhaps picking the exposure that is best for the closest leaves and using that as a top layer in photoshop then erasing the artifacts might help?

Posted 22 hours ago. ( permalink )

Jeff Presnail says:

I don't what to write to add to this NOVEL of a review page. If Stephen Newport doesn't get a little + or ...gasp... # next to his name in the Golden Comments thread for December then I think I'm going to take that goal off my list!

Did anyone else notice the cop in the shot? Probably.

I'll summarize quickly and bow out gracefully here...
Impressive - check
Scale clearly shown - check
Lots of detail - check
Drama - check
Realism despite HDR - check check

Well done.

Posted 21 hours ago. ( permalink )

Chris Mullins says:

Mmmmm. A waterfall. Can't ever go wrong with a shot of a waterfall, especially with nice fall colors in it!

I like the simple composistion here, and I also like the fairly low-key HDR treatment that you gave this image. I love the fall colors, and I love the overall look of the waterfall.

There are 3 things I don't like:
- The big black area bottom-right. You should put some text in here (or your signature) to make this look intentional rather than accidental in terms of composistion. The dead space just jumps right out of the page at me.
2 - The too-bright highlights at the foot of the falls. As you have all he HDR images, just do a bit of burning to tone this down and bring some texture back in. As this is really the brightest spot of the photo, my eye goes right to it.
3 - The too-bright highlight at the top of the falls. This is minor in comparison to the foot of the falls, but it's still easy enough to burn out from your bracketed images.

Very nice work, really. I love waterfalls, so I may be a bit biased.
Posted 21 hours ago. ( permalink )

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Taken in Dundas Peak, Dundas (map)
Taken with a Nikon D200.
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Taken on October 24, 2009
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Waterfall

Comments

Mike Seliske says:

JeffTKrol says:

_richter says:

Grums says:

emanuelez says:

lytfyre says:

- POD - says:

lytfyre says:

- POD - says:

CalebPhotographer says:

Stephen Newport says:

Yovo Photo says:

Jeff Presnail says:

Chris Mullins says:

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