First try HDR

Ok so i thought id give this a try.

Let me know what you think, where i can improve and any pointers, I use Photomatix pro 3.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …erekmackinnon/6​091178574/

For processing, looks very underexposed/dark to me but more important, I would have taken this in landscape orientation.

I like the vertical crop. The foreground is a little dark, open up the midtones -- but not bad. It is the sky that is way too dark, and you are getting hallows around the sky meet foreground areas.

In many of my HDRs, I will clone is a non-HDR sky in the shot. HDR processing tends to make the sky look very contrasty and stormy. Sometime that works. sometimes a nice bright blue sky with WHITE clouds looks better.

You are tweaking color when HDR and tonemapping, so don't be afraid to combine different images from two different techniques.

I actually like the dark, gloomy effect. It really shows what a ghastly day it was. I also like that it's not very HDR'y. For all we know you could've used a flash to achieve the effect.

I really appreciate the comments guys. No flash was used.

The scene appears to be one that probably did not need to be captured with multiple exposures- i.e., a single raw exposure would have sufficed for the overcast, or cloud occluded, lighting. Did you shoot raw and did you try processing this image as a simple raw conversion?

the image is flat and lacks contrast. The white balance is very bluish, and the image has the typical photomatix color cast problem. There is obvious haloing in the typical areas (border between tree and sky, for example).

Kirk

I liked the motive. You have som halo around the trees. You can try to experiment with the Lightning Adjustment in Photomatix to avoid it. As an alternative you can take the tonemapped picture together with the originals and mask in the best parts from all the pictures.

Brilliant guys thanks again, yes this was shot with 3 shots in raw, +/-2 exposures.

I use photomatix and lightroom, i also have cs3 and a trial of cs5, im really just starting to learn how to use all of them and with your comments you have helped me learn a good few things.

Edit, just to answer your question Kirkt, i shot in raw, converted to jpeg in LR and then put them into Photomatix and played about with the sliders, it really is the most of my skill set as of now, im always looking for help to make them better.