Stone Circles

[Paranormalist]

Beaghmore Stone Circles located in the Sperrins region of Co.Tyrone.
Minor adjustments applied in Elements 5 for the first two. Third pic converted to B&W and sky darkened and contrast increased. Vignetting effect applied as well.

#1

#2

#3

C&C welcome..

[Luffy]

Number 3s the one very striking

[Jitetsu]

1. Decent capture but not really interesting. Looks like you're halfway between a decent landscape or more of a close in perspective. If you got a little further out and perhaps did a bit of light HDR treatment on it then it might start leaping off the page.

2. Feels like way too much foreground. The real subject is taking up a thin band of maybe 1/5th of the image and you've just got grass and a somewhat cloudy sky above. I don't know if you were using a polariser but that could work better with a bluer sky and you could have possibly done multiple exposures for more detail in the clouds. I expect the sky looked far more exciting in person.

3. The kitten on my chest certainly likes this one and I really do too. The sky is exciting, the photo leads you down the landscape and gets you to the tree in the background and it's a lovely candidate for B&W. I like the line of rocks on the left and you might have got a good shot moving to your left and doing them leading to the tree in the centre and a little more zoom.

[Paranormalist]

Originally Posted by Jitetsu

1. Decent capture but not really interesting. Looks like you're halfway between a decent landscape or more of a close in perspective. If you got a little further out and perhaps did a bit of light HDR treatment on it then it might start leaping off the page.

2. Feels like way too much foreground. The real subject is taking up a thin band of maybe 1/5th of the image and you've just got grass and a somewhat cloudy sky above. I don't know if you were using a polariser but that could work better with a bluer sky and you could have possibly done multiple exposures for more detail in the clouds. I expect the sky looked far more exciting in person.

3. The kitten on my chest certainly likes this one and I really do too. The sky is exciting, the photo leads you down the landscape and gets you to the tree in the background and it's a lovely candidate for B&W. I like the line of rocks on the left and you might have got a good shot moving to your left and doing them leading to the tree in the centre and a little more zoom.

Thanks for your comments, Jitetsu - all taken on board.
I don't know very much about HDR except that the results can sometimes be nothing short of amazing.. But I intend to and will get into it in the near future. Maybe someone can point me in the direction of a good tutorial?
I've never shot in RAW before either but I intend to start doing that too.
I was using a circular polariser. The light was changing a lot with the sun coming out and then disappearing again behind the clouds.

Cheers

[Just call me Al]

Originally Posted by Paranormalist

Thanks for your comments, Jitetsu - all taken on board.
I don't know very much about HDR except that the results can sometimes be nothing short of amazing.. But I intend to and will get into it in the near future. Maybe someone can point me in the direction of a good tutorial?
I've never shot in RAW before either but I intend to start doing that too.
I was using a circular polariser. The light was changing a lot with the sun coming out and then disappearing again behind the clouds.

Cheers

Here is the site to download Photomatix from (HDR). It is free to use but it puts three watermarks on the finished picture. (for now I clone them away, but I will probably buy it). You can practice with the RAW file in the 'Post Processing Experiment and Learning' post. You need to make two other copies, one brighter & one darker, then put the three into Photomatix. In Photomatix it says Generate & after that you just Tonemap, this will give you a picture to play about with or you can just save it. (that's the simplified version).

[Liquid101]

yep - No. 3 for me. Great conversion.

My only negative would be the composition. You have a nice line of stones leading up the tree, but they seem to start in slightly the wrong place. Perhaps if they entered the shot right in the bottom left corner it would be more pleasing. Still, thats a minor niggle in a very nice photograph.

I can see what you were doing with the second, but it just hasn't worked. Perhaps if you filled the top 2/3 of the frame with sky, leaving just the circle at the bottom it woudl have a worked better. Another BW coversion with some heavy shading on the sky, and it woudl have been a cracker.

[Paranormalist]

Originally Posted by D2V2D

Here is the site to download Photomatix from (HDR). It is free to use but it puts three watermarks on the finished picture. (for now I clone them away, but I will probably buy it). You can practice with the RAW file in the 'Post Processing Experiment and Learning' post. You need to make two other copies, one brighter & one darker, then put the three into Photomatix. In Photomatix it says Generate & after that you just Tonemap, this will give you a picture to play about with or you can just save it. (that's the simplified version).

Originally Posted by Liquid101

yep - No. 3 for me. Great conversion.

My only negative would be the composition. You have a nice line of stones leading up the tree, but they seem to start in slightly the wrong place. Perhaps if they entered the shot right in the bottom left corner it would be more pleasing. Still, thats a minor niggle in a very nice photograph.

I can see what you were doing with the second, but it just hasn't worked. Perhaps if you filled the top 2/3 of the frame with sky, leaving just the circle at the bottom it woudl have a worked better. Another BW coversion with some heavy shading on the sky, and it woudl have been a cracker.

Thanks a lot, D2V2D.
Cheers for the feedback, Liquid.

[rizingstar]

#3 for me Mr.P

Along with Photomatix I've also got Dynamic-Photo HDR which you might find to your liking as i think the latest version has the option of just using 1 jpeg to fake the HDR ,obviously not as good as 3 single or from RAW but good enough to get the hang of how it works.