A Few Fall Pics

[tylermoney]

Figured I'd post a few images from a nice fall day a few weeks ago and get some opinions from folks. Thanks.

[Robert_Lay]

#2 is a moderately interesting landscape, but the sky is rather washed out. There is not enough interest here. It needs something to draw the eye in.

In #1 it is simply a picture of a jack-o-lantern, and the background has nothing to do with that. I would suggest that you need to isolate the jack-o-lantern from the background and substitute a more innocuous background. I think I would then work on getting a light into it.

[pickupman92]

a jack-o-lantern on the front step with the door to the house blurred is always a great pic. I do enjoy the second one as well, but Robert hit it spot on.

[ScottKCooper]

Kind of wishing the buildings were gone in the 2nd one, and the blue sky enhanced a bit.

[jetcode]

I think if you crop the pumpkin image into a square you could have an interesting backdrop for a very cool pumpkin.

[tylermoney]

Thanks for the advice. Not sure these were the best picks out of the series, but I thought they had something about them, and figured people on the forums would have suggestions on making them better.

I realize that there isn't anything all that special about the pumpkin... other than the fact that I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it before. It's quite different from your standard. I'll see if I can play around with it more to give it more interest.

As for as the landscape. I seem to have problems form time to time getting that "perfect" sky. Any suggestions on why my skies tend to be a little flat a lot of the time? There is another landscape where the buildings play a little bit more of a role. Maybe I'll work on that one instead. It's part of the appeal of that particular park. Anywho, thanks again. I'll try and play with these in the next couple of days.

[MNUplander]

As for as the landscape. I seem to have problems form time to time getting that "perfect" sky. Any suggestions on why my skies tend to be a little flat a lot of the time? There is another landscape where the buildings play a little bit more of a role. Maybe I'll work on that one instead. It's part of the appeal of that particular park. Anywho, thanks again. I'll try and play with these in the next couple of days.

You are dealing with a very common problem in outdoor photography. The amount of dynamic range (dark shadows to bright highlights) your camera sensor can "see" with a single exposure is far narrower than what your eye can see. The result is that, many times, your camera will expose for the foreground and blow out the sky to an all white or light blue bore, or on the other end of the spectrum, give a perfect image of that beautiful sky and everything else is underexposed or black.

There are a few solutions to this problem:

1. Take 2 or more bracketed exposures of the same image from a tripod and combine them in post processing. For 3 exposures, one shot should be 2 stops under the meter, one at the meter, and another 2 stops over the meter. The more range you have (backlit with the sun and shadows in the foreground), the more exposures you will need to create a pleasing image.

2. Graduated ND filters are used to darken a portion of the image to remove enough dynamic range for a camera sensor to capture all of the data without blowing highlights or losing shadow detail.

3. Expose for the middle of the dynamic range and try to recover as much as you can in post processing. This only works if the highlights are not all white and the shadows arent all black - there is no detail left to recover here.

Im sure there are other ways, but this should get you started on things to research.

[tylermoney]

Makes sense. Sounds good. Thanks!

You are dealing with a very common problem in outdoor photography. The amount of dynamic range (dark shadows to bright highlights) your camera sensor can "see" with a single exposure is far narrower than what your eye can see. The result is that, many times, your camera will expose for the foreground and blow out the sky to an all white or light blue bore, or on the other end of the spectrum, give a perfect image of that beautiful sky and everything else is underexposed or black.

There are a few solutions to this problem:

1. Take 2 or more bracketed exposures of the same image from a tripod and combine them in post processing. For 3 exposures, one shot should be 2 stops under the meter, one at the meter, and another 2 stops over the meter. The more range you have (backlit with the sun and shadows in the foreground), the more exposures you will need to create a pleasing image.

2. Graduated ND filters are used to darken a portion of the image to remove enough dynamic range for a camera sensor to capture all of the data without blowing highlights or losing shadow detail.

3. Expose for the middle of the dynamic range and try to recover as much as you can in post processing. This only works if the highlights are not all white and the shadows arent all black - there is no detail left to recover here.

Im sure there are other ways, but this should get you started on things to research.