A Big Sur Morning Picture

[nnewell]

please critique me!

http://www2.photosig.com/viewphoto.php?id=487713

[slejhamer]

Not much going on in the bottom left third. Your trees are leaning to the left. Lovely light. One thumb up ( :D )

[nnewell]

thanks for the critique! what kind of post processing could be done to lighten up the picture and get the foilage to stand out more?

[slejhamer]

nnewell wrote:
thanks for the critique! what kind of post processing could be done to lighten up the picture and get the foilage to stand out more?

A simple layer mask and curve adjustment would work. I pasted your pic into Photoshop to test it, and it did. ;)

[nnewell]

I have a new image, retouched from a different shot. Dont know photoshop, but looks like I should be getting into it - sounds like fun.

http://www.pbase.com/image/8450175

http://www.pbase.com/nnewell

[Conk]

nnewell
These are the type of photographs are most difficult to shoot. When the sun is behind your subject or just when the background is way brighter than the foreground.
Now, I am just a newbie myself and these have proven to be the most difficult for mw also. What I am hoping to do is buy the proper filters when I can afford it to help in shooting such photo's. I still need to do some actual hands-on research to figure out exactly what filters to use. I believe polarizing and neutral density filters are what are needed to compensate for the dark foreground given what I have read in this forum.
I suppose that's all part of the fun in photography is the experimentation and trying new things.