[BrianR]

It was mostly the ice formations I found interesting here, the overall lumpy shapes, but also the striations in the large mass near the centre and left. These fine striations are visible to the eyes, but really don't turn up without some processing, so I opted to give HDR a whirl. I always worry about overdoing these things. I'll take any advice or suggestions, a few of my own notes/worries:

Does the Ice look 'overcooked'?

Is the slightly rising (as you go left to right) ice/water line blech?

I don't think I did a great job connecting the lower part (ice) to the upper part (lighthouse).

Does the black hole at the bottom right provide a counterpoint to the lighthouse? I'm always drawn to these little holes, where keys and other small objects vanish into an inky void, sort of the opposite of what a lighthouse should do.

I should have stuck around another half hour or so to let the sun set,a little more but my stomach was ruling my schedule.

I'm also borderline on the lighthouse being sharp, I'm thinking if there's a next time I'll give focus stacking a whirl and shoot at f/11 or f/8.

This was a 3 shot bracket, 0.3s, 1/8s, and 1/20s, all f/16 and iso80, included below for reference, exported from lightroom with the 'zeroed' preset.

[Sluggo]

I don't think it's overdone at all. A lot of landscape HDR makes scenes not only inaccurate but entirely implausible. What you have here just does a great job of showing the detail.

But the picture does seem to be tilted a bit. When there is still water available with reflections, I think it's good practice to use the reflections as a reference for leveling.



... not that it takes anything away from such an appealing image, IMO.

Edit: now having mentioned the reflection, I'm wondering whether it's true or if I was taught wrong about this principle. Because if I tilt your picture to make a vertical reflection, the base of the (lighthouse?) structure is clearly off. So either the structure itself is not level, or there's some kind of "shear" going on in the picture, or I'm just wrong. I'd be happy to be corrected!

[BrianR]

I don't think it's overdone at all. A lot of landscape HDR makes scenes not only inaccurate but entirely implausible. What you have here just does a great job of showing the detail.

But the picture does seem to be tilted a bit. When there is still water available with reflections, I think it's good practice to use the reflections as a reference for leveling.



... not that it takes anything away from such an appealing image, IMO.

Thank you!

Do'oh... I did the HDR using Nik HDR Efex and intended to crop/straighten when it went back into lightroom. Thanks for your feedback and spotting my leanings.