First HDR attempt - Peace Pagoda in Milton Keynes

[MitsiTurbo]

Evening all,

Attempted my first HDR last night. It is of the Peace Pagoda in Milton Keynes. I am not very happy with the foreground. The pagoda itself appears somewhat blurry, especially the flowers and gold statue. The upper section seems quite sharp though. Please excuse the 'Photomatix' watermarks. I havent decided whether or not to buy the full version yet! I think I need some more practice first!

Anyway, here it is:

Comments and criticisms welcome!

Cheers

John

 

[booyaka]

i like it a lot - wonderful colours and look to it! Excellent!

 

[onefivenine]

Like the angle, in fact it doesn't look like HDR. Not sure about the choice of aperture/focussing though, only the top of the pagoda looks sharp on my screen.

 

[jonnypb]

like oneinfive said the angle of the shot is good but it doesn't look much like hdr.

i'd try boosting the contrast or going wild with the tone mapping settings. i've just started hdr and the best way to learn is just try loads of different settings

 

[senu]

Unique angle and very non-HDR HDR

 

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

It looks extremely HDR to me. The glow around pagoda is a give away to me. It looks obviously maniplulated to me. It's still a nice image of course! Nice

 

[MitsiTurbo]

Thanks for the comments guys. Im going to try running it through Photomatix again and have a real fiddle with all the settings.

With regards to the blurry foreground, I used an aperture of about 4.5-5. Thinking about it now, I should have had it smaller to get everything in focus. Im still very much an amateur photographer and still getting to grips with exposure and focusing etc, so am I on the right lines here? Using the smaller aperture I mean!

Thanks for the input!

John

 

[hot-fuzz]

i think its a stunning picture, very impressed.

love it.