First Try at HDR

[LIVE4EVA]

Hey everyone,
I have recently been looking into HDR and figured i would give it a go...
Please feel free to have a play with the image as i know its not great but i would like to know how i could improve it.



C&C Welcome and Wanted
Thanks
LIVE4EVA

[Murray Foote]

What did you use for the HDR? I tried my first HDR in Photoshop CS3 recently but it didn't work well enough and I ended up doing it manually.

I think you should have climbed the fence. I don't think the foregraound grass and fence help in this image.

It occurs to me that while probably "realistic", the foreground is perhaps a little flat. A little subtle play of late light on the hills and the tops of the tussocks might help. Perhaps you could have taken two HDR sequences, one for the sky and one for the foreground. Next work out which exposures correspond and combine each pair in Photoshop - with luck you could use the same mask for each. Then combine them with HDR.

If you then found that the adjustment of the foreground was too strong then assuming the new foreground was the top layer, you could go back and adjust the opacity of each one and then recombine with HDR.

Just a thought.

Regards,
Murray

[LIVE4EVA]

I used PhotoMatix running through wine on Linux... i am still yet to try and put CS3 on since changing to Linux a few weeks ago.
Thanks for that advise i didnt really think of making 2 hdrs and merging but it does make a bit more sense.
The photo was taken about an hr from where i live so i will try and get back there to redo it in the next few weeks and see how i go.