What would you do with this?

[Belmondo]

http://www.bytephoto.com/photopost/data/500/353122_2280_filtered-med.jpg

I took this at dusk on New Years Day. I was using a 10D with a 17-40L. I had to bump the ISO up to 800 to get a reasonable shutter speed for this handheld shot.

The only thing I've done so far is to run it through Neat Image to clean up some of the noise. Beyond that, I really don't know if this is worth messing with. Opinions would be appreciated.

[Leighow]

BELMONDO

This is a BEAUTIFUL image! It must be super in large size with the mountains in the background and the interesting sky.

My 1st reaction was to the fire, so I opted to turn this into a nightscene, with a variety of "play" activities :idea: !

- cropped, rotated horizontally, and rotated 1 deg CCW
- changed the mode to Adobe 1988 to deepen the flame and sky colors
- adjusted the "channel contrast" to add more warmth (yellow) to the sky
- added a bit more contrast overall in Lab Mode
- isolated the sky and dropped its brightness
- isolated the flame-lite areas at the bottom of the balloon and increased its color saturation
- dropped the entire image via curves to suggest that night was approaching.

Anyway, that is my story ... it was fun....thanks for asking (you are a brave man!) :P .


PS: I actually rotated horizonatally to pick up some left-to-right motion via the gravel path... but... the path disappeared into the darkness of the night :!:

http://members.rogers.com/hleigh/BALLOON.jpg

[Conk]

In my opinion I would first crop off the left side of the photo to off center the balloon. You may not want to lose the sunset/rise but I think you'll be better off looking at things left to right. The clouds streak in that direction also. Crop off the bottom of the image just below the basket to lose all the dead space below. Now my eyes won't wander all over the photo. The image is a touch dark so lighten it up a bit and saturate the blues a little and the reds ever so slight as to not over power the blue in the sky but just let the viewer know that there is indeed a sunset.

http://genji.image.pbase.com/u38/conk/upload/24821088.353122_2280_filteredmedb.jpg

[Belmondo]

BELMONDO

This is a BEAUTIFUL image! It must be super in large size with the mountains in the background and the interesting sky.

Howie:
Thanks for your nice words. I do like what you did with it. I was really torn about darkening the overall image versus trying to preserve the colors in the balloon. On the other hand, the way you brought out the clouds really does improve the feel of the picture. Ultimately, the mood is more important than the details.

Thanks for your input.

Tom

[augmoon]

very nice photo

I applied a fuji velvia action that I got from:

http://www.fredmiranda.com

which warmed it up a lot, especially since that time of day gets real blue anyway.

http://augustmoonstudios.com/forum/balloon_velvia.jpg[/img]

[maderito]

Belmondo -

Nice shot. There's a lot of color in this image - but it's hard to bring out. I may have overdone it - but here's the result of some "tonal adjustments" and cropping to alter the perspective --

http://display.lifepics.com/imgdisp.asp?filespec=%60foxhx2cuxmwdogx%5D9%3C%3D8 %3B9dOjeOrmlfeinqpvw4nzj%11254%40%409%0D%3A38358

[shirbit]

what a beautiful image...I'm relatively new to this site & don't think I can post an image here unless I'm paying for that privelege...I did a little adjustment to your pic...not much, don't want it to come out looking too fake...just adjusted the levels/curves a bit & cropped it.
http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/shirbit2001/detail?.dir=/2004-01-03&.dnm=balloon.jpg

[4walls]

I'm relatively new to this site & don't think I can post an image here unless I'm paying for that privelege...

Shirbit... you can post images, there is no fee involved. The restriction here is that you cannot upload images to this server, you have to point to the image on another web server. If you know "where" your photo lives on the internet, you can use the image tag on this forum to point to your picture... as shown below.
[img]http://yourwebsitelink.com/file.jpg[/img]

[shirbit]

Thanks for the info...I tried to find this info in another thread..but had no luck searching for it...thx again.

[Conk]

Augmoon
Excellent retouch!

[Belmondo]

Thanks everyone for your opinions. I am greatly impressed with your abilities at improving the photo. Every one of them is a vast improvement over the origineal picture, and I'd be hard pressed to decide which I like best. Each one evokes a certain mood/feel, and there is clearly no 'right' one.

Thanks again.

Tom