Two weeks ago I had an assignment in the medieval city Brugge. While walking around I suddenly noticed this view. Some said to me that this image is not worthwhile posting. I know it is not the best image I have ever made but I think had has potential. Please let me know what you think of it.
TECH-INFO: I shot 7 JPGs hand held. First I processed them in DxO Optics Pro to perform lens corrections. This is especially needed for architecture. Then Photomatrix merged them into a HDR file. I used the settings align images and remove ghosting. The alignment worked perfectly but ghosting was just more or less OK. After tone mapping I loaded the image in Photoshop Elements to heal and clone away some imperfections due to some ghosting residues. Finally I used DxO again for adjusting contrast and vibrance.
Diagonal View of Houses
Two weeks ago I had an assignment in the medieval city Brugge. While walking around I suddenly noticed this view. Some said to me that this image is not worthwhile posting. I know it is not the best image I have ever made but I think had has potential. Please let me know what you think of it.
TECH-INFO: I shot 7 JPGs hand held. First I processed them in DxO Optics Pro to perform lens corrections. This is especially needed for architecture. Then Photomatrix merged them into a HDR file. I used the settings align images and remove ghosting. The alignment worked perfectly but ghosting was just more or less OK. After tone mapping I loaded the image in Photoshop Elements to heal and clone away some imperfections due to some ghosting residues. Finally I used DxO again for adjusting contrast and vibrance.
This is technically excellent as always Paul. I just wonder if there is too much in it.
LightningPaul: Possibly there might be too much in it but I'm not sure at all. When taking a picture you (have to) loose so many things. So some things that you decided to leave in, must be (IMO) enhanced to get some certain feeling and strength. I really like the texture of the walls and the clouds which are both amplified in this image. On the other hand I had to loose a big part of the atmosphere, the very beautiful looking surroundings, the crowd, the many tourists taking similar images and so on. I appreciate your opinions a lot, it makes me thinking about my and other images, thanks Bill.
Brugge is really an amazing city, especially in winter because you can walk on the ice;
I like very much this picture, the unusal angle of view makes the shot !
LightningPaul: I love Brugge too. The Christmas market with ice is back this year. I'll try to shoot some images, though I don't know when I'll have time.
I love to do a nice tilt (angle) from time to time. Thanks for your comment.
Good angle, nice geometry, fine architectural picture. I just regret that the treatment you have applied flattens the colours and removes all shadows. Too much HDR !
But I like it
LightningPaul: Thanks Denis for your comment.
The HDR tone-mapping revealed lots of details in clouds and especially the walls. I agree there is less overall shadow, but there are still some very dark (=black) parts in the image. I wanted to have the wall still bright enough too fully see them well; they form the main subject.
I did not crank up or saturate the colors because it would look less real. If you like I can send you one of the 7 JPGs I shot so you can compare it.
I agree that there may be a little too much HDR. I use HDR fairly often, but a trick I've learned is to make an HDR image and take the best frame or two into photoshop and composite them all together, using different blend methods and opacities.
In this image there's a lot of detail that's nice but would be lost in a composite, though.
LightningPaul: The reason of using Photomatrix is that it lets me to keep and enhance all the details. I really love the program. Composing two (or more) pictures in Photoshop would be good if the image is much less complex. I think it can be really worthwhile trying for certain cases. Unfortunately I don't have enough experience with that program but I'm learning pretty fast (a few months ago I hardly opened even Photoshop Elements). Many thanks for your comment, I really appreciate it.
Wow! Original point of view for build great shot. After read many information about HDR in your photoblog, I started to use photomatix... Not bad but it's difficult to found time for apply the technique.
LightningPaul: I wish you all the best using Photomatrix. It's a great tool which can make it pretty easy to get great results. On the other hand, you have 32-bit amount of data which must be tone-mapped to 8-bit, so you have endless possibilities and interpretations to achieve that.
May I suggest to spend at least a full week experimenting with the the controls of Photomatrix. Try different pictures, each image much be individually tweaked.
Personally I like to set the "Light Smoothing" on "High" or "Very High", push up the "Micro-contrast" and "Strength" a lot. I also experiment with the "Highlight Smoothing", it will bring back the highlights so the result looks more pleasing. Of course, from time to time I do exactly the opposite too.
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