Thank you all for your time in looking and the comments. Since joining this group my photographic thinking has been drastically altered regards final product. Early on, in my digital career, I simply did what I call grab shooting. I saw, I turned the camera on and took the shot. Post processing may have included contrast change and some sharpening and possibly brighten or darken, now I am going back to the old school of darkroom work. In the case today it's all computer and not darkroom, so I am learning a whole new field of endeavor. Thanks again for the suggestions and, as I said, my thinking, past my eye, is changing. I will do what I can in the PS world or maybe I will have to return to the Catskill, get the multiple, and go the HDR route. Best Regards, Byrle.
Larry Bolch
09-May-2008 05:01
To bring detail out of the dark and middle tone areas - without blowing out the sky - select the highlights either via Colour Range, or with the Magic Wand set to a tolerance of about 32. (Works in either Photoshop or PSP) Invert the selection and copy and paste it as a layer. Set the layer mode to Screen and watch the detail pop up. With this image, you may have to merge the layers, then repeat it, using the proportional slider to get just the amount needed.
Byrle, First off, your compostion is pretty good here, the only part that bothers me is the pole barn in the upper right corner has something out in front of it like a pumpkin man or something and I find that to be distracting, however I really like how you have the silo inside of the arch of the barn! Then comes the exposure... Digital is a lot like slide film thus the exposure lattitude is about 1.5 stops at best, and you have the walk out basment storage area that is at least 1 stop under exposed as well as the hip of the roof... if you were on a tripod, you could have shot two images and used the best out of each and made one spot on image or you could have done HDR. I think that either would have helped you here, and yet the image is still very pleaseing..., and if you would have increased the exposure overall... you would have blown out the sky... what you did was the best for what you have but, I believe using HDR would have been even better. Nice work!
Guest
08-May-2008 22:41
Home sweet home, I thought my roof was a bit leaky :-)
