Fort picture

My wife asked me to print some pics of local landmarks and liked this one. I dunno.

It looks overexposed. Let's see what the histogram shows.
It shows that there are a lot of highlights clipped or burned out.

Using Levels to adjust it as best I can, I get this, which still has a bald sky. So, for the future you need to have more patience to find the right lighting, or you have to learn to fake in a sky from another shot.

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well i prefer the original, maybe an in between of both, no matter what the histogram says.

Thanks, Bob. The original is not underexposed like the one I posted. Something changed when I reduced it and uploaded it. Saturation and sharpness seemed to drop as well.
You are right about the sky. I thought the light would be good around 7PM but the sky is about as boring as can be. Fortunately, the fort is about 3 minutes away so I can easily go back and shoot it again. Appreciate your help.

Jon

I like the original. But that's not to say that I can accept the bald sky.
You could paint the sky with a graduated blue brush and paint in some clouds or you could composit a sky from another image into this one. If done well, the sky wouldn't be distinguishable.

maybe you liked it cuz the house is smiling at you lol

The void sky is obviously a bit of an eyesore, but it's easy to fix. Obviously shooting again in better light would fix it, but it's really easy to do in PP too. Just open an image in photoshop that has the sky you want, paste the image with the blank sky over it, and use the magic eraser to get rid of the white, revealing the blue sky behind it. (Except for those pesky gaps in tree branches. Those can get to be a pain.)

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bob did you mean overexposed? the original sure looks overexposed to me

Nice job, Griptape, and thanks for the advice. I actually tried to put a sky in and used the regular eraser. This wasn't working too well. Will try the magic eraser. Never used it before.

buddhamonk wrote in post #5825347
bob did you mean overexposed? the original sure looks overexposed to me

I agree, and I don't think that, aside from the sky, the original was even overesposed.

Here's my fort shot with a sky. Thanks for everybody's help.

buddhamonk wrote in post #5825347
bob did you mean overexposed? the original sure looks overexposed to me

I just corrected my post. It would appear that Dyslexia is winning the race with Alzheimers in my tired old brain.

In the first edit, the sky doesn't blend well with the leafs in the tree tops and that maybe sacrifices a small degree of realism. The sky might also be under exposed for the remaining light levels. But the exposure is great.The 2nd edit is a winner. Its a good work of art.

lbcyalater wrote in post #5821027
maybe you liked it cuz the house is smiling at you lol

I hadn't noticed its a happy house.