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I had some time to burn whilst up there on the central coast, not a bad spot, also some good locations for sunrise too albeit it was a pretty early start to get there in time.

I am keen for some thoughts on the first image in particular and yes no rays were added

I hate not having a calibrated monitor at work.....but the first image looks really promising!

Love the first, but unfortunately the blown sky draws my eye. Perhaps a crop to remove that area but that may weaken the compo as you will lose those branches forming the 'v'. How about cloning some foliage into the the blown area?

The other two don't do hit the spot.

Gerry

#1 for me as well. #2 just doesn't work with the long exposure - it's too unnatural. Do you have one that's a shorter exposure as compositionally I like it.

Hi Gerry there's a lot about #1 to like. I'm quite ok with the bright spot - its where it needs to be to draw you up to that very nice looking tree - rays are very cool and useful too. Is this a HDR? - its got some telltale signs that lead me that way even though it's quite subtle and I like it (hard to tell I'm viewing this on the iPad)

I dont mind the longer exposure in #2 but the image as a whole doesn't do anything substantial for me

Gerry, you have really managed to capture a huge dynamic range in these....a bit too much to be natural looking, and that signature super-saturated colour (esp green) is definitely in these.

#1 is still the pick, I would love to see a toned back #3 as well!

Number 1 for me also, and I have to agree with Cameron's second comment regarding the dynamic range. I am not a real fan of the light rays, however, as they look to me somewhat unnatural or at least over-exaggerated.

Geoff M wrote:Love the first, but unfortunately the blown sky draws my eye. Perhaps a crop to remove that area but that may weaken the compo as you will lose those branches forming the 'v'. How about cloning some foliage into the the blown area?

Thanks Geoff, the blown area is delibrate in this case, i do have the dynamic range there and could mask in a nicely exposed patch of sky, however I find with these kinds of scenes, my eye expects some level of reality and for me this is often a bright spot for teh sun rather than capturing all of teh range, rmeinds me more of what I saw when I was there.

That said, cloning some foliage in would be a compromise, main some brightness but reduce its impact?

Geoff M wrote:The other two don't do hit the spot.

stubbsy wrote:Gerry
#1 for me as well. #2 just doesn't work with the long exposure - it's too unnatural. Do you have one that's a shorter exposure as compositionally I like it.

hmm, i don't think i have another version of that scene, i did try and minimize the number of shots taken and am fairly sure I only took a few from that position all long exposures.

Remorhaz wrote:Hi Gerry there's a lot about #1 to like. I'm quite ok with the bright spot - its where it needs to be to draw you up to that very nice looking tree - rays are very cool and useful too. Is this a HDR? - its got some telltale signs that lead me that way even though it's quite subtle and I like it (hard to tell I'm viewing this on the iPad)

Thanks Rodney, yeah, its definitely HDR in the sense that its multiple brackets

aim54x wrote:Gerry, you have really managed to capture a huge dynamic range in these....a bit too much to be natural looking, and that signature super-saturated colour (esp green) is definitely in these.
#1 is still the pick, I would love to see a toned back #3 as well!

Thanks Cameron, it is more of a fantasy scene than a pure reality and hence the pushing of the contrast and saturation - plus, ya gotta give the luv to the green stuff!

Reschsmooth wrote:Number 1 for me also, and I have to agree with Cameron's second comment regarding the dynamic range. I am not a real fan of the light rays, however, as they look to me somewhat unnatural or at least over-exaggerated.

Did I mention teh rays are natural

Thanks for the feed back folks.

biggerry wrote:

Geoff M wrote:The other two don't do hit the spot.

 LOL - fat fingers on an ipad keyboard

To confirm: The other two don't hit the spot.

Geoff M wrote:

biggerry wrote:

Geoff M wrote:The other two don't do hit the spot.

 LOL - fat fingers on an ipad keyboard

To confirm: The other two don't hit the spot.

Nice photographs and they bring to mind the
picture on idyllic place. I like the composition
colour, and use of light. The first and last are
the best for me.

How did you get such an awesome shadow from the tree in the first one?

zafra52 wrote:Nice photographs and they bring to mind the
picture on idyllic place. I like the composition
colour, and use of light. The first and last are
the best for me.

cheers Zafra

SloppyBob wrote:How did you get such an awesome shadow from the tree in the first one?

well ..let me see...i had a monster mirror up the top there reflecting the light into teh right place, then next i had a container of talc powder which i used to get the dusty rays...

seriously though, its just a image made from several bracketed shots, there is no way I could capture the dynamic range of the scene with a single shot, the shadow in teh tree is just part of one of those bracketed shots.

biggerry wrote:

Reschsmooth wrote:Number 1 for me also, and I have to agree with Cameron's second comment regarding the dynamic range. I am not a real fan of the light rays, however, as they look to me somewhat unnatural or at least over-exaggerated.

Did I mention teh rays are natural

Didnt mean to infer they were not natural.

Reschsmooth wrote:Didnt mean to infer they were not natural.

i reckon they look a bit unnatural so such is my surprise in the fact that they actually are natural and there is no post massaging of them

seriously though, its just a image made from several bracketed shots, there is no way I could capture the dynamic range of the scene with a single shot, the shadow in teh tree is just part of one of those bracketed shots.[/quote]

Wish I understood what bracketed shots were anyway awesome photo even if you are unnecessarily sarcastic to an obvious beginner!

SloppyBob wrote:Wish I understood what bracketed shots were anyway awesome photo even if you are unnecessarily sarcastic to an obvious beginner!

Knowing Gerry I expect he was just trying to be humourous

As for bracketing - basically many (most?) D-SLR's allow you to take multiple exposures of an image in rapid succession at different exposure compensations (better on a tripod but for some things can be done handheld). For example one straight (normal 0EV metering) exposure just as you normally would and then one which is purposely overexposed and then one which is purposely underexposed. The idea here is that you then take these images and blend them together - taking the correctly exposed parts of the normal image and from the overexposed image you take the parts of the scene which were in deep shadow in the normal image (because in the overexposed image they are brighter and have more detail) and from the underexposed image you take the parts which were blown out in the normal image (because in the underexposed image they are darker and have more detail).

SloppyBob wrote:seriously though, its just a image made from several bracketed shots, there is no way I could capture the dynamic range of the scene with a single shot, the shadow in teh tree is just part of one of those bracketed shots.

Wish I understood what bracketed shots were anyway awesome photo even if you are unnecessarily sarcastic to an obvious beginner! [/quote]

hey Bob, that was your first post to teh forum, there is no way I am to know anything about you or your skill level, I am more than happy to explain and help but I am sure you can appreciate that its hard to know how much effort or detail to put into a response when you have no idea about the person at the other end.

Regarding the idea of bracketing, I am happy to elaborate and Rodney has already taken the liberty to jump in and give you a quick run down of the basic concept, in a nutshell, it is a image made from merging several images together to capture all of the light range, ie the stuff in the shadows and the sky.

oh and welcome to DSLRusers.