Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Landscape & Nature Photography => Topic started by: Jeevz on September 28, 2014, 04:06:28 am
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The spectacular Victoria Falls in low flow from the Zambian side.
(https://gp1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/806614/photos/photos.500px.net/84695785/04f1c4f520b44bb257fccfdb4eb9242959a6a981/4.jpg)
Victoria Falls Sunset by Sanjeev Deo on 500px (https://500px.com/photo/84695785/victoria-falls-sunset-by-sanjeev-deo)
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I like!
I like a lot!
Tony Jay
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I like!
I like a lot!
Tony Jay
+1.
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Amazing to get motion blur (slow shutter speed) with the sun right into the lens must be
a fader ND filter.
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I like the idea of this photograph. It's a spectacular place and it's not too often that one can see as much of the chasm as is shown here, simply because of the amount of must generated. So you have captured this at just the right time.
Having been there, I do, however feel unbalanced by the overly bright foreground, given that you are shooting into the sun. It's not that it shouldn't be bright, it just unnaturally bright. As well there are haloes along the horizon which the average viewer may not think twice about, but to photographers speaks of over-processing. It also appears as if an adjustment brush was used on the sky to increase the colour.
Now I may be completely off in my assessment, but that's the way it looks to me. Enhancement and accentuating aspects of the image are critically important to the artistic vision of the photographer, but it just appears as though they are over-done here.
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I agree with Terry about the processing. Regarding the Fader it is unlikely that one was used because at wide angles the Fader only gives one or two stops of less light. To get less stops you have to zoom. It looks like a wide angle to me or possibly a stich job?
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Spectacular view! I like it a lot.
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Indeed perhaps a touch overdone, but a great shot nonetheless.
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Thanks for all of the responses and critiques everyone.
In terms of equipment used/how I processed it: it was Canon 7d + Sigma 30mm with a Hitech ND 1.2 reverse grad. It is a stitch job - 3 photos. For each photo I took 3 exposures and manually blended (mainly with luminosity masks) - to get a little more detail in the rock and in order to get the sunburst.
I see the haloing - that was probably partly because of the filter, and partly because of some poor masking as I blended. I have fixed that in a new process. From my own technical critique I don't really like the banding in the sky, and I might try and fix that in another edit, but I may have to reblend them from scratch which is a bit of work :)
In terms of the 'unrealistic' portrayal of the scene with the bright foreground and backlit scene I completely understand. And I can see that it is not everyone's cup of tea. I wanted to get that sort of look because there are many photos around from that viewpoint at sunset that do look more natural and 'silhouettey'. And those are great photos, but I wanted to try to capture/create something a bit different.
I guess later on when I have some time I might come back to it and process it in a different way; I have plenty of decent RAW data available, but aside from the haloing and banding in the sky I am reasonably happy with how it turned out at the moment.
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From an artistic perspective... who cares. Take what you've got there, and push it even further. See what you can creatively create since it's already got a slightly unnatural feel, make it perhaps more intentional and go in and highlight what you want.
On your second process, maybe you go for a more natural and smoother feel, I don't know. But it seems like you maybe tried to accomplish both a natural feel and a HDR photo in one. Spectacular location, great photo, I'm not knocking it. But the sky on the top right... well it's clearly processed from a technical standpoint.