Sunrise at Tuas

[nigel84]

Instead of the usual Sunrise we would see with the sun. I captured this with the clouds and the pure white rays of the sun behind the beautiful clouds. I would like to know if this pic would be something worth printing out and hanging it on the wall. Personally i do reali like the feel of this pic, mesmerizing. If you would put it. On a side note i forgot to add a border to the pic, and flickr is working very slowly for me; lazy to re-upload. haha... Do share with me your comments on this.

Sucked to the dawn << bigger version

[Headshotzx]

That's a nice shot. Did you stop-down your aperture? Your clouds seem way too soft, and that doesn't do justice to the white light.

[night86mare]

Originally Posted by Headshotzx That's a nice shot. Did you stop-down your aperture? Your clouds seem way too soft, and that doesn't do justice to the white light.

just for clarification, and learning, what does "clouds seem way too soft" mean?

i have never seen hard or sharp clouds before.

[nigel84]

Errm, no if i'm not wrong its at f11 and above. But i think its due to the stacking of a few images that resulted in the softness. I took serveral exposures and stacked them up to achieve it. I muz say its not wat night86mare expectations are. Hahaha, his work too pro le.

[nigel84]

bro night86mare, can share with me ur gd views on this? I dunno how to use photomatrix, so use photoshop to individually stack them up. Noob u see. Can share ur workflow with me? Thanks.

[night86mare]

Originally Posted by nigel84 Errm, no if i'm not wrong its at f11 and above. But i think its due to the stacking of a few images that resulted in the softness. I took serveral exposures and stacked them up to achieve it. I muz say its not wat night86mare expectations are. Hahaha, his work too pro le.

no one pro here, we are all learning.

anyways, back to the picture, i don't think depth of field or sharpness was an immediate issue here, in fact the clouds are amazing, i like how the colours have been done here, and the movement adds quite some drama (btw, i think the perceived "softness" is due to movement between frames - clouds may have differentiations but they are never "hard" or "sharp" per se, if i could see the outline of a cloud i'd be very shocked).

what spoils it for me is the choice to put an overwhelming amount of foreground which is messy at the bottom - i know there is a limiting factor by your location, but unless time was a constraint, i.e. you got there late, you should move away from this location, the sprawling mass which "grows" to the right is quite disorientating. a normal cliched landmass/treeline which is straight and uniform would be better.

other than that i think it is pretty good. i find such beautiful clouds sometimes very hard to capture, if they have no harmony with whatever foreground the place has to offer, i'm sure you had a hard time too.

oh, and on another note, i'm not sure if you've sharpened your image or it is due to resizing, but that tree line around the right is too sharp. looks a tad unnatural.

btw, what is the stacking for? i don't understand. if you wanted nice saturated colors you can do it via the channel mixer/saturation tool.. don't need to stack it to get a "multiply" effect.

[nigel84]

Errr night86mare, i did not do any sharpening to the pics. I'm not a fan of photoshop sharpening effects... I only do it when it is very very necessary. As for why i did the stacking was because there were certain orange hues that was capture in the lower EV, and i wanted the original instead of pushing it from photoshop. I'm not sure if its correct. Comments?

[night86mare]

Originally Posted by nigel84 Errr night86mare, i did not do any sharpening to the pics. I'm not a fan of photoshop sharpening effects... I only do it when it is very very necessary. As for why i did the stacking was because there were certain orange hues that was capture in the lower EV, and i wanted the original instead of pushing it from photoshop. I'm not sure if its correct. Comments?

ah. like i said, might be resizing then. so long as it doesn't look quite so solid in the bigger output.

how did you do the stacking? layer and erase?

[Headshotzx]

I meant that there borders defining the edge of the clouds are kind of missing. Not too sure if it was due to the cloud formation itself, but edges are especially soft. I'm now also thinking that it could be cloud movement due to long shutter speeds.

[daxdigital]

Nice shot, though I find the wires on the lower right area to be a bit distracting.

[nigel84]

Originally Posted by night86mare ah. like i said, might be resizing then. so long as it doesn't look quite so solid in the bigger output. how did you do the stacking? layer and erase?

Yeah, 7 layers, manually mask erase. Think can be better. I tried using photomatrix and photoshop automate HDR but all look horrendous. decided to do this instead. I very lousy in HDR. haha Still trying to pick things up.

Originally Posted by Headshotzx I meant that there borders defining the edge of the clouds are kind of missing. Not too sure if it was due to the cloud formation itself, but edges are especially soft. I'm now also thinking that it could be cloud movement due to long shutter speeds.

err true, i do agree as i open my shutter for quite some time, although i cannot remember the actual settings.

Originally Posted by daxdigital Nice shot, though I find the wires on the lower right area to be a bit distracting.

Oh, tt part, i was deciding if i should just clone it away. But decided against it. I some how just like the lines there. I dunno. haha...

Anyway all valueable comments were taken to heart seriously. Thanks guys.

[HTCahHTC]

Originally Posted by daxdigital Nice shot, though I find the wires on the lower right area to be a bit distracting.

actually, i love this shot. but gotta agree that the wires are abit distracting.

[calebk]

Originally Posted by Headshotzx I meant that there borders defining the edge of the clouds are kind of missing. Not too sure if it was due to the cloud formation itself, but edges are especially soft. I'm now also thinking that it could be cloud movement due to long shutter speeds.

The first thing that would come to mind is the exposure level at the point where the highlights meet the clouds is still overexposed, hence there is perceived softness.

[nigel84]

err so would it be accurate that i should burn them lower to gain back certain outlines?

[calebk]

Originally Posted by nigel84 err so would it be accurate that i should burn them lower to gain back certain outlines?

The fact is that you'll never get completely sharp cloud edges any way. In your photo's case, the exposure is acceptable too, so there is really no need to burn the clouds in.

[nigel84]

sad to say, acceptable does not seem acceptable to me haha... I have a greed for perfection. still learning the ways on controlling exposures. I'm trying to move myself to say it is correctly exposed and wrongly exposed...haha

[calebk]

Originally Posted by nigel84 sad to say, acceptable does not seem acceptable to me haha... I have a greed for perfection. still learning the ways on controlling exposures. I'm trying to move myself to say it is correctly exposed and wrongly exposed...haha

You must understand that if the whole photo is of perfect exposure, essentially the end result is a flat photo that is 18% grey throughout.

What brings out texture and dynamic range is some overexposed and underexposed regions.

Think of it this way: a soccer team can have 10 defenders (+ 1 goalkeeper). They probably will get a very good defensive record, but it'll be boring and they probably will not score; on the contrary, having a good balance of attacking and defensive players and you will get better results.

Similarly, you cannot have every shot perfectly exposed throughout. There are shadow regions, and there are highlight regions.

[nigel84]

Thank you thank you... I get the point you are coming from. Should change the way i think. Thanks!

[night86mare]

Originally Posted by nigel84 sad to say, acceptable does not seem acceptable to me haha... I have a greed for perfection. still learning the ways on controlling exposures. I'm trying to move myself to say it is correctly exposed and wrongly exposed...haha

nothing wrong to it, i thought it was fine here. it is subjective actually, this exposure thing.

what's correctly exposed for some people may not be right for others, especially if you deliberately underexpose it or deliberately overexpose it. here it does tend towards the deliberately underexpose side frankly.

and calebk is right. you will *not* get very very defined cloud edges, it's simply impossible unless you do super highlight recovery or extreme hdr which will make your picture look a tad plastic.

[nigel84]

oh i see i see. Thanks for all valuable feedback. will take note of such cases next time.