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Our family spent a number of days at my parents house in the Shoalhaven on the South Coast of New South Wales. Whilst driving there I noticed this paddock of lush green grass strewn with these round hay bales and since it was close by to where my parents live I figured I'd go back and spend some time composing some images with the bales.

Critique welcomed...

I took some compressed detail images with the tele - a few I liked are below...





It was a very cloudy overcast day but the clouds were moving reasonably quickly and away from me over the mountains - in fact it appeared that the higher cloud was moving from behind me on my right and the lower cloud was moving from behind me on my left and all converging over the mountains in the distance. I put on the Tokina 12-24 ultrawide, got in close to some bales and added the 10 stop ND filter for some really long exposures to capture what I hoped would be streaks of cloud movement converging into the distance.

I got in quite close and low to the ground to emphasize the bale



Found a higher viewpoint (I setup the tripod on top of one of the bales ) but which was still relatively close to another bale

Nice, i like the last, the colour cast on the sky adds something extra, the BW one does little for me.

I'm going to be a little contrary. I like the depth and composition of the 3rd and fourth shot, but not the particular post editing on both.

I prefer the composition of the third one, however the let down is the hay bale in the foreground. I would prefer to see more detail by increasing the brightness and without the burn on the RHS obscuring it.

yeah agree, lose that vignette in the #3 and get more detail on the foreground to balance the soft texture in the background.

Is that cast deliberate??

biggerry wrote:Nice, i like the last, the colour cast on the sky adds something extra, the BW one does little for me.

norwest wrote:I'm going to be a little contrary. I like the depth and composition of the 3rd and fourth shot, but not the particular post editing on both.

PiroStitch wrote:I prefer the composition of the third one, however the let down is the hay bale in the foreground. I would prefer to see more detail by increasing the brightness and without the burn on the RHS obscuring it.

surenj wrote:yeah agree, lose that vignette in the #3 and get more detail on the foreground to balance the soft texture in the background.

Is that cast deliberate??

Thanks heaps for the helpful suggestions (and totally agree) - here is a rework of #3



and for reference the original in colour



The purple sky is basically as shot (with AWB with the bigstopper) - although in the as shot originals it's a lighter mauve - I corrected the WB for the lower half and kept the purple for the upper half ('cause I like purple and green )

With the black and white, I would like to suggest burning the top edge to provide more contrast and mood in the sky and
increasing the contrast with the rest of the field and the hay bale.

Feel free to disregard or tell me I'm plowing the wrong field.

I think these last two are a gret effort Rodney.
I like this shot, and the composition.

getting warmer... remove more vignette...

I like the first one and the last eddition.
Although the first one could do with a little
sharperning on the bale.