Lovely light - Lough Key forest park

[Enda Cavanagh]

Howdy folks.

Shot on a Hasselblad H3D 39 with an Arca Swiss RL3Di and a Schneider 28mm Digitar xl. 2 sets of image for a vertical stitch.

I visited Lough Key forest park in County Roscommon a couple of times recently. It was for the 1st time in 37 years. The last time I can remember been there was on the day of my Holy Communion in fact!. I checked out the forest the day before and I came across this amazing location where the place just came alive at a certain time of day. Everything just made sense. The light was almost biblical. The mosses came alive from the back lit sunlight and I managed to get this incredible star burst. I knew I had to be there at the same time next day. My main goal was to shoot a 360. I took this vertical pano first. Half way through the 360 I get "card full" and I was like nooooo. I realised I had left all my cards in the bloody car which was a good walk away. I started deleting images which I knew were junk to try and free space but it didn't work out. I had to go back a second day a few weeks ago which worked out fine. I got the shot and much more. I'll post them as I process them.

On a side note it's my first image processed on Anders's Lumariver HDR software. I must say. It offers amazing depth to the image

[walter.sk]

The scene and the subtle HDR processing are stunning.  Please forgive the following suggestion, though:  for me, having the sun roughly halfway on the vertical dimension draws my attention to it at the expense of the fantastic light and shadow interplay of the forest floor.  Again, for me, the sky and upper half of the image is kind of bland but takes up a tremendous percentage of the image.  I would crop at the top of the starburst, which would put the emphasis on the luxuriant lighting at the lower levels of the image.

The problem with panos, vertical or horizontal, is that it is very difficult to find compelling composition across the breadth (or, in this case, height) of the image.

I wish I had taken it, though...

[Enda Cavanagh]

The scene and the subtle HDR processing are stunning.  Please forgive the following suggestion, though:  for me, having the sun roughly halfway on the vertical dimension draws my attention to it at the expense of the fantastic light and shadow interplay of the forest floor.  Again, for me, the sky and upper half of the image is kind of bland but takes up a tremendous percentage of the image.  I would crop at the top of the starburst, which would put the emphasis on the luxuriant lighting at the lower levels of the image.

The problem with panos, vertical or horizontal, is that it is very difficult to find compelling composition across the breadth (or, in this case, height) of the image.

I wish I had taken it, though...

Thanks for the feedback Walter  

I just played with it after reading it. A lot of the subtitles are really lost on the web. I actually really like the delicate forms of the high level branches running up/diagonally and the branches on the right tree arching upwards into the blue sky. I did crop it just to see and to me it just smothers the scene a bit.

[walter.sk]

That's fine...we have different styles or approaches.  It's a great image, either way.

[Paulo Bizarro]

Very good work.