Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Slobodan Blagojevic on February 29, 2008, 04:35:06 pm
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Just wanted to share with you my photograph that was recently published on the cover of a UK magazine (Digital Photographer, issue #67). The main theme of the issue is: "Pro Secrets: Landscape Masterclass". The link to their website: http://www.dphotographer.co.uk/ (http://www.dphotographer.co.uk/)
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Here is the original photo and a little story about it. I took the photo during my 2007 family trip to the Acadia National Park. When we arrived to the Bass Harbor Lighthouse for sunset, literally busloads of tourists and quite a number of photographers with carbon-fiber tripods were already there, occupying every vantage point imaginable. The sky, unfortunately, did not look particularly promising (to me, at least). I decided to wait until after the sunset, hoping the afterglow might be less contrasty and more pleasing. My wife, however, did not buy into my "audacity of hope" and decided that a warm cup of tea in a four-mile away fishing village is a more appropriate use of our time.
When I came back half an hour later, not only the hordes of tourists disappeared as soon as the sun dipped behind the clouds on the horizon, but also all the photographers but one left, to my surprise. Now the two of us had the whole rocky shore at our disposal, without getting in each other's way. I noticed a small tide pool on the rocks, reflecting the top of the lighthouse, and decided to make it a part of the composition. The contrast was still quite strong, and I had to bracket. The picture here is a result of just two extreme exposures, +2 and -2 f/stops, blended manually. I tried a CS3 HDR with all three exposures, but the result looked funny and artificial, at least to me. I guess I am not that familiar with all the possible HDR tweaks, but no matter what I try, the results are not looking natural. Good, old mask and a soft brush to the rescue.
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Very nice! And congratulations!
Eric
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Congrats indeed!
Mike.
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And six years later, I found out that it was used as a cover of their Portuguese editions too.
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Congratulations!
Cheers,
Bernard
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Somehow I missed this one, Slobodan. It's a fine shot, though it looks as if the saturation slider took a trip to the right in PP.
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Somehow I missed this one, Slobodan. It's a fine shot, though it looks as if the saturation slider took a trip to the right in PP.
Apparently (or almost certainly), that's what sells magazines, Russ :) The magazine actually cranked it up even more than I did.
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Congratulations on this one and the OP shot as well. Interesting back story as well.
Chuck
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Apparently (or almost certainly), that's what sells magazines, Russ :) The magazine actually cranked it up even more than I did.
My guess is that they have tried to lift the shadows and increased the saturation and contrast to compensate. A shadow on the screen is a black pool of ink after the printers have been at it.
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Good stuff Slobodan - and interesting story behind the shot too!
Tony Jay
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Nice Image! Nice Cover! Congrats! The issue is on my iPad in Zinio and I'll read it soon. Nice to see that you are submitting images to different magazines and getting them accepted.
Kevin Raber
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I'm sure your wife was delighted with the photo too!
I wonder these days if SNS HDR would do a good job with the three exposures?
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... I wonder these days if SNS HDR would do a good job with the three exposures?
I never got the proper hang of automated HDR programs, I must admit. I simply do not believe that any machine can possibly know what to treat and what to leave alone. It tames every highlight, and opens up every shadow, while not all of those need equal treatment or any treatment at all. Maybe newer software offers more choices in that respect, but still not enough to compare with manual blending. The most I've been doing these days is a round-trip from LR to PS' "Merge to HDR" and back to LR as a 32-bit file for further processing. And even then I have to use a bunch of localized adjustments.
For instance, in the image on the cover, I treated the foreground and background differently in terms of white balance. Not sure if any automated software could do that (or figurer out that it should). I treated horizontal rock surfaces differently than vertical (basically, 3D sculpting it) - again, no software could do that, nor understand why. I treated the front of the house differently than the side as well.
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Congratulations--great stuff.
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Beautiful! Way to go!!
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My guess is that they have tried to lift the shadows and increased the saturation and contrast to compensate. A shadow on the screen is a black pool of ink after the printers have been at it.
I think printers did a pretty good job with the shadows, just check the patch of black rocks in the shade, immediately above the reflection. The only thing they (the magazine, not the printers) is that they put a bar code right across the most interesting part of the image (the reflection).
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Hey, Slobodan: Have you counted the exact number of colors in your photo? ARGB or sRGB or ProPhoto? ;D
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Hey, Slobodan: Have you counted the exact number of colors in your photo? ARGB or sRGB or ProPhoto? ;D
Waiting for Andrew to make up his mind. He seems to vacillate between "stupid question," 16.7 million, and "infinity and beyond." ;) As for space, it was CMYK.