Lovely Limburg

Pieter · 07-02-2008, 03:13 PM

Two months ago I was in Limburg, the most southern and foreign part of The Netherlands, since it's not flat. I even think I was just some 50 metres away from the Belgian border, but I like these pictures anyway

1.

2.

3.

Used the DA 18-55 and a polarizer.

Critiques are very welcome

Pieter · 07-05-2008, 01:05 PM

Anyone?

Are they really that bad?

ibbe · 07-05-2008, 02:19 PM

no not bad,really pleasant deep in the pics

*Ole* · 07-05-2008, 02:45 PM

Good work, nice composition, all three of them! Perhaps crop no. 2 a bit from the top so that the horizon isn't smack in the middle. And brighten it somewhat.

Pieter · 07-06-2008, 04:38 AM

Thank you for the comments!

Originally Posted by Ole

Good work, nice composition, all three of them! Perhaps crop no. 2 a bit from the top so that the horizon isn't smack in the middle. And brighten it somewhat.

You mean like this? I used google's Picasa to resize and brighten it a little.

I like this one better indeed

Thanks,
Pieter

Zewrak · 07-07-2008, 03:35 AM

#1. Very nice picture. It really shows some depth. The only thing I would change with it, if your into editing is to blue up the sky. And a part of the treeline looks very bleak, I would add some colour to it. Nothing you could have done at the time of the shooting I guess, except for perhaps dual exposure to get some colour and details in the sky (if there was any) or use a filter. It looks like the right side of the sky might be blown out, so a greyfilter might be something you should invest into.

#2. This picture seem to lack some contrast in the background, it could use some work with curves. Also I would crop the shadows out on the left, or clone them away (alt mask and adjust them)

#3. Excellent picture aswell. Same as picture 1 and 2 though. I would mask the background part to add some extra contrast and perhaps even use unsharpmask to get more detail into it.

All three are winners. You got some great photographic eye, you just have to work a bit on postprocessing. I included a couple of edits of your images. Ofcourse, the saying "crap in, crap out", its hard to make anything good of lowres jpegs. But I hope you see my points in the images. I never edited the sky of picture 1 though.

Also, I am by no means an authority on this, it's just my humble opinions. Hope it helped.

PS. Clean your sensor

Pieter · 07-07-2008, 09:14 AM

Thanks for the useful comments! Concerning the shadows in #2, I had made a second shot without them, so I opened it up with a trial of PSP X2 for the first time and did some PP. I corrected the horizon, had some fun with colors, curves and contrast and did a bit of sharpening and the result is in the attachment.
It's a shame that it's compressed quite rough, because the red wind indicator that sticks out above the trees can hardly be seen now.

Hey, found a place to upload a high-resolution photo, click here

I'll try to improve the other photos too.

Originally Posted by Zewrak

PS. Clean your sensor

Yeah, I bought a cleaning kit after I'd seen these photos

EDIT: I edited the first one too. I selected the sky and simply pushed the blue color tones. I can't remember there was any detail in it when I took the picture, just a bright blue sky of a sunny day. It works for now, but I also bought a graduated grey filter for those situations when it doesn't.

Click on the image to view it in a larger size

Pieter · 07-07-2008, 12:25 PM

Sorry for the new post, but my last one was becoming quite a mess
So I edited the final photo too, and although the difference isn't that big, I think I like it noticeably better. Again, I blued up the sky in the same way, then I selected the background and added some contrast and a bit of unsharp mask. After all it's quite simple

Thanks again, Zewrak

Zewrak · 07-07-2008, 12:57 PM

Yes it looks better