Scenery from Dunedin, NZ [Re worked!]

[surenj]

NZ is fairly picturesque. This is an attempt to recreate some of the surreal scenes that you may encounter. These clouds and the sunset was quite magical.




Love to hear your critique as usual.

Unfortunately the picture looks soft due to the forum modification. I have kept exactly to the specifications of 800 pixels. Hmm... interestingly when I changed to a 799 pixel image, the sharpness seem to be restored Dissapointingly it seems to put a dotted line as an outline...maybe firefox effect?

[biggerry]

nice shot surenj, love those birds on the left there, my only comment would have to been to crop a bit of the sky away and get a bit more NZ land in, but nontheless nice image!

[Murray Foote]

I'm not sure I agree. A bit more foreground maybe but I don't think cropping the sky down helps the balance of the images.

Regards,
Murray

[ozimax]

Excellent shot of a beautiful but frigidly antarctic city.
Did you get to walk up Baldwin street?
Did you get to the albatross colony?

[surenj]

Thanks for your comments Gerry, Ozimax and Murray.

Gerry, Unfortunately there was a distractingly large house if I had included more foreground.

Ozi, yes, I have walked up [and tried to run a race!] and down Baldwin street. Driven down at 70km/h in a friends sports car etc. I have also been to the Albatross colony [That was when I was using a APS film camera!!!!...Minolta Vectis] I didn't visit those places this time.

This view is from a hill in the suburb of Waverly.


Regards
Suren

[norwest]

I like the light on and above the homes on the hill. Contrasts well with the foreboding dark weather.

[CraigVTR]

Great image. Cropping the sky down would just take away that feeling of drama that the cloud provides. HDR?

[surenj]

Craig, it's a 3 shot HDR.

Thanks to everyone who commented...

[biggerry]

Gerry, Unfortunately there was a distractingly large house if I had included more foreground.

fair call I was wondering about whether it was HDR.

[Ant]

Damn, I had to look up a map of Dunedin to remember where Waverly is (and one of my best mates in uni days comes from there). Puts the photo into better perspective though! I spent a lot of weekends honing my riding skills on the Portobello Rd (scarey when water comes across it).

Nice shot! Made me think of home, although I am from further south and only lived in Dunedin for 5 years.

Ant.

[surenj]

Ant, Dunedin is a lovely little town, but the frigid winters are somewhat off putting. NZ is general is very photogenic. When I look through my photos from the past, the NZ photos really standout despite being taken with a little Canon A40. [the vast DOF with the P&S also helps the landscape shots... ]

[Murray Foote]

Surenj and Ant,

I have some friends who live just out of Dunedin to the North. I'm from the other end of Godzone but these are people who lived with me for a while in Canberra. They have a great view and some land but it's south-facing, they're in the shadow of the hill and in winter they're above the snow line. I was there during a cold snap in Summer and it was very cold then, a cold snap in winter would be something.

Here is a shot from the other side of the road from their front gate, taken in 2004 at dusk, scanned from 6x7. It's facing vaguely south-east.



Regards,
Murray

[phillipb]

In my opinion, cropping a little off the sky wouldn't achieve much. Cropping a lot off the sky however would turn this into a really interesting pano.

[Murray Foote]

I think that's a different shot though that could work as well. I think it's more a shot of the sky than the suburb. I'm more inclined to wonder about toning down the yellow house in the foreground a tad as well as the lighter patch of ground below it and also the little specular highlight just below the dark clouds at the right and maybe darkening the right edge of that light bit at the far right as well .

... Maybe even make all of the land part darker to focus more attention on the forms and tonality in the sky and maybe it would work as a monochrome....

[Man Tripod]

i think its a great shot surenj. Agree that cropping to pano size would also work very well.

[surenj]

Thanks Murray, philip and the Man Tripod,

I have taken everyone's opinions on board and came up with some more intepretations.. I re HDR'ed it as there was some horrible things in the bushes with the first one... perhaps movement artifact...

Here are the re worked images. I think it looks better. Any thoughts? Thanks very much for your feedback.

[craig.rohse]

Hi Surenj
The first re worked Image is great, it looks so much better than the HDR version the colours just look more natural and the crop is perfect their was just to much grey cloudy sky in the HDR.
Well done!!!

[aim54x]

The reworked (colour) image works very well. The pano crop really puts the a focus to the image rather than viewer being lost in the grey skies.

Great stuff!