Emeral Isle, North Carolina

Hi all. I've recently returned from an east coast trip which included a week on Emerald Isle as well as day trips to surrounding locals such as Beaufort, Atlantic Beach and others. We also spent the following week driving up the coast with stops at Williamsburg, Jamestown, Charlottesville VA and Washington DC. Believe me when I tell you there are too many shots to process, nevermind post, but here's the first post of the trip which I've held to just the Emerald Isle HDR's shots. I've also posted some non-HDR's in the Nature and Landscape areaif you're interested in those too. I'll be posting up more from the trip in separate threads as I get through them.

1. The moon setting over a the Bogue Bay public boat launch canal during sunrise.

Some nice scenes here..well done Jon.
The egret estuary (the sky!!) and 2 sunrises are special....did you get any good close ups of egrets? (I checked the other forum)

Thanks Spike. I forgot to mention the color. There were large wild fires burning about 100 miles west of where we were, and when the winds pushed it in our direction which happened on several occaisions we were graced with some unusual colors. I have a moonset shot around here somewhere and the moon is so orange it looks like the sun.

Unfortunately, I was not properly equiped to capture the egrets up close that morning. It was quite windy, and they were already waking and flying off during that shot. The distance combined with wind and (lack of) light killed any chance of getting them up close. Even pushing my ISO to 3200 which on my camera is a no-no, I still couldn't get my shutter speed to anything close to acceptable.

Nice series Jon...at both forums posted. My only nit would be what appears to be vignetting on the upper right corner of #2 above.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of the photos from your trip as you get them processed.

Thanks Gene, and you're right as usual about the vignetting in #2. I'm guessing it's occuring on all 4 corners, but mostly noticable in the top right. That's the cost of not upgrading to the 16-35II I guess.

Here's a few more shots from the beach. Both of these are moon shots over the water. Emerald Isle faces south, not east, so this time of year the moon rises and falls across the ocean, but the sun over the bay side.

Moonrise.

Looks like a nice trip! In your first set, 1 and 2 are really well made, with my only nit being that the foreground grass in 1 appears oversharpened. Both are shot with beautiful light and you obviously thought about making the image in choosing to shoot at those times of day.

In #6 - was this a two image panorama? I ask because there is a vertical seam that runs through the middle of the image, most noticeable in the sky - I made a strong curves adjustment to your image to accentuate the seam (see attached). It looks like Image 2 may also have that seam in it, but if it does, it is barely noticeable.

Looking forward to more posts!

Kirk

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love the pier shots and the one below it with the marsh. very nice toning on them.

Thanks for the comments everyone! They are very much appreciated.

Gene, here's an attempt at a fix for the vignetting. For some reason this should be easy fix proved a bit tougher than I thought. It may be that I've replaced the vignette with smudge.

Here's another sunrise shot taken a few minutes after #5 over the marsh grass.

J-Blake wrote in post #12858305
Here's another sunrise shot taken a few minutes after #5 over the marsh grass.

Bingo! That's my favorite.

Jon,

The replacement sky does look a little flat. Try running the single exposure image through photomatix or even Topaz Adjust before using it to replace the sky. That way, you'll get a closer match to the rest of the tonemapped image.

Wow this sunrise image is awesome. As a noob to HDR, can I ask how your process was for both this shot and the walkway at moonrise were? Both are brilliant. I never thought to try HDR with low overall lighting situations.

Thanks Bill. I think I posted to soon, as I'm getting to some good ones.

Gene, I tried to modify per your suggestion, but it didnt still quite match. I'm going to leave it for now and go on to new shots. I do appreciate the suggestion and will work on it another time.

Here's another hot off the press:

J-Blake wrote in post #12859329
Thanks Bill. I think I posted to soon, as I'm getting to some good ones.

Gene, I tried to modify per your suggestion, but it didnt still quite match. I'm going to leave it for now and go on to new shots. I do appreciate the suggestion and will work on it another time.

Here's another hot off the press:

Okay. New fave. Knock it off.

Thanks mr2step! I have no problem explaining the entire process in detail, but I don't want to bore everyone. PM me your phone number and let's discuss.

Thanks again Bill! Love to hear it!