Algonquin Park, Lookout Trail

First time in Algonquin Park this past holiday weekend in Canada and the weather was unseasonably cold and wet so camping was not the most enjoyable activity but the skied did clear up for a good few hours on Monday afternoon and decided to make the vertical trek up to Lookout Trail which oversees a good chunk of the park which is huge!

Anyway, here's one from the top of the cliff, taken with my 17-40 L @f/11.

So... I hope you don't mind...but would crop it, and add some oompf. Seems a bit flat to me. I am by no means a pro. In fact, I don't even have PS. So I did my edit in Picasa. Wanted to see more lines. Something that would lead my eye. Added a bit more color to the sky. More diagonal line would fit this the best, IMO. So...here goes. I'm sure someone else could really make this nice. BTW...this looks somewhat HDR....true?

amethyst dragon wrote in post #5565479
So... I hope you don't mind...but would crop it, and add some oompf. Seems a bit flat to me. I am by no means a pro. In fact, I don't even have PS. So I did my edit in Picasa. Wanted to see more lines. Something that would lead my eye. Added a bit more color to the sky. More diagonal line would fit this the best, IMO. So...here goes. I'm sure someone else could really make this nice. BTW...this looks somewhat HDR....true?

The picture I posted was already a crop in that the original picture was framed with the horizon very close to being in the middle of the picture but I actually like the idea of your crop which may lead me to do a re-crop of the original which has more rock-cliff available. As for the color rendition, the sky was actually closer to reality in my posting as it was an overcast day so I guess its an artistic decision to change that into a sunnier one?

As for the question about HDR; no. This was a single shot, metered off the darker parts of the view and then recomposed and taken. I should have hauled my tripod up to the top to do a bracketed shot but the climb was very wet, slippery and steep and needed to keep my load to a minimum as I often needed to grab onto tree branches to avoid slipping and falling into the mud that was everywhere, thanks to the previous day's worth of steady rain.

Cheers!

omg its bee a while since ive been on the lookout!

what a great hike expecialy in the fall

nice!

The idea to re-crop this shot was a good one!

I just went back to the original shot and tried my own attempt at another crop and also gave it a mild chalk effect with a simple frame along with a slight vignette effect.

Better or worse now?

Cheers!


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That looks great! Glad you liked the idea. Much more appealing to the eye... (at least mine anyway!!!) Do you think it's a tad dark?

amethyst dragon wrote in post #5572197
That looks great! Glad you liked the idea. Much more appealing to the eye... (at least mine anyway!!!) Do you think it's a tad dark?

Yes, I do agree this did come out a bit too dark after it was resized for the web, the larger file seemed brighter on my monitor but still toward the darker side which was closer to the actual weather conditions at the time of the shot. I think I should do a test printing of it to know for sure if it really needs to be brightened up a bit more.

Thanks again for the crop suggestion! Its a real plus to get sound advice here and I appreciate it.

mamabravo wrote in post #5569793
omg its bee a while since ive been on the lookout!

what a great hike expecialy in the fall

nice!

Thanks for checking out the shot and glad you liked it! Feel free to post your picture from that view-point, if you have one? It might be fun to see how other people's results fared from this cliff...hopefully you had better weather during your trek there then I did.

Cheers!