The Three Sisters


S1mplicity

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Feb 19, 2010
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1. In what area is critique to be sought?

Composition, I guess. I'm new and have an interest in Landscape Photography and really want tips and suggestions on how to improve. Also I HDR-ed it with 3 exposures.
Was the HDR overdone?

2. What one hopes to achieve with the piece of work?

Besides capturing the iconic Three Sisters of NSW Australia, i wanted to show the height and depth of the valley, as well as the distinctive blue tint around the mountains. Also I hope to blend HDR with Landscape photography because I personally feel it's a rather interesting combination.

3. Under what circumstance is the picture taken? (physical conditions/emotions)

Handheld, around 3-4pm. About 1km AGL I believe on a lookout point.

4. What the critique seeker personally thinks of the picture

Alright I guess, sadly one of the better landscape pictures I took I feel. Would be better if I brought a tripod but space and weight constrictions didn't allow me to bring it along for the flight and trip. Just doesn't feel...right. I honestly have no idea why.

Thank you for your time :)
 

3 sisters??.... can't really see why it is called 3 sisters. Name of the place?

imo, hdr makes the clouds and rest of the photo don't gel together.

For such a photo, usually I will do a 16:9 (or slightly wider) format stitch. cos it is easier to impress by showing a larger viewing width than to show the height and depth of the valley on a 2D image without any reference object in the photo.
 

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...Besides capturing the iconic Three Sisters of NSW Australia...

I believe "The Three Sisters", you're referring to the place with this name. My personal opinion is that the HDR is a bit overdone, if you look closely at the left most cliff structure, you see quite a bit of posterization on the rock surfaces. The cloud textures that day seems nice and the background has great potential, you might consider doing a panorama to show the magnificence of the scene. If possible, you could wait the golden hour since you were there around 3-4pm, the colours and atmosphere could have been different. Since you mentioned that you didn't bring a tripod, did you shoot all your exposures for HDR hand-held? Or was the image a pseudo HDR generated from just one image?
 

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The three sisters should be referring to the 3 rocks formation on the left bottom of the picture. Personally, just feel that cloud color looks fierce and not natural.

The Three Sisters

The legend of the Three Sisters is perhaps the most interesting story heard from around this area. According to an Aboriginal dreamtime story, the three huge rocks formation were once three beautiful sisters named "Meehni", "Wimlah" and "Gunnedoo" from the Katoomba tribe. The three sisters fell in love with three brothers from the Nepean tribe but their tribal laws forbade their marriage. The three brothers did not accept this law and tried to capture the three sisters by force. This caused a major tribal battle and the lives of the three sisters were thus threatened. A witchdoctor decided to turn the sisters into rocks in order to protect them and thought to reverse the spell only after the battle. Unfortunately, he was killed in the battle and the three sisters remained as the enormous and beautiful rock formations until today. The magnificent formation stands at 922m, 918m, and 906m respectively.
 

The sister in the middle must had been the fatter one.
 

3 sisters??.... can't really see why it is called 3 sisters. Name of the place?

imo, hdr makes the clouds and rest of the photo don't gel together.

For such a photo, usually I will do a 16:9 (or slightly wider) format stitch. cos it is easier to impress by showing a larger viewing width than to show the height and depth of the valley on a 2D image without any reference object in the photo.

Yeap it's the name of the place as someone pointed it out later, sorry didn't make it more clear haha.
Alright, thank you for the input! Will definitely try that format.

I believe "The Three Sisters", you're referring to the place with this name. My personal opinion is that the HDR is a bit overdone, if you look closely at the left most cliff structure, you see quite a bit of posterization on the rock surfaces. The cloud textures that day seems nice and the background has great potential, you might consider doing a panorama to show the magnificence of the scene. If possible, you could wait the golden hour since you were there around 3-4pm, the colours and atmosphere could have been different. Since you mentioned that you didn't bring a tripod, did you shoot all your exposures for HDR hand-held? Or was the image a pseudo HDR generated from just one image?

Yeah, I think it's a tad overdone too. If only there was a way to kinda have the HDR more elaborate on certain parts of the picture.
Anyway, my initial plan too was to try and do a panorama shot of the place but I never tried doing it without a tripod, so I kinda assumed it was impossible.
I'd really love to be around there during the "golden hour" too, but sadly I was on a tour group that only allocated 15 minutes at that lookout point. The rest of the tour was on rides, and forest walks and stuff that didn't really ever get me back this view that I really like! And yeap, I shot the exposures hand-held. Just "spray and pray" that have minimal hand movement! haha.
Thank you so much for your input. :)

The three sisters should be referring to the 3 rocks formation on the left bottom of the picture. Personally, just feel that cloud color looks fierce and not natural.

Yeap, thanks for giving more info about that place! Yeah, looking at it again, the clouds were rather fierce looking. Pity the weather that day wasn't too good I guess. It rained quite heavily about 30 minutes after.

Thanks for your input!


The sister in the middle must had been the fatter one.

:thumbsup: Have to agree HAHA.
 

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Just doesn't feel...right. I honestly have no idea why.

First off, the processing is not too pleasing. HDR is good when you are able to control to replicate what you see or interpretation of what you see. But some rules you need to still adhere to. One being the sky is over darkened to a point it looked unnatural, while the rest of the picture is much brighter.

Compositional wise, it would be much better to see more of the cliff that is connected to the 3 sisters. The portion below and to the right of it. The way it is framed now made it look too abruptly cut off. I know this may be the limitation of your lens, that you are not able to go wider. But what you could have done is do a panorama of a few shots to get more in. And yes, panorama handheld is possible with deep DoF and AE-L. Just need to cover more so you have space to crop off bad edges. But the view is awesome, with lots of potential, the layers of mountains can give you very good depth in the picture.

One more thing you can try is also converting this to B&W. With some dodge and burn you can get a better picture than HDR sometimes. Just to give you some ideas, this is a mountain scape I did for Huangshan in China
3788637616_1c28f2af1a_z.jpg
 

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definitely an overdone hdr, the result is patchy looking photo with weird phantom lighting everywhere.
 

3 sisters??.... can't really see why it is called 3 sisters. Name of the place?

This place is the Blue Mountain, New South Wales. Sydney.
 

This place is the Blue Mountain, New South Wales. Sydney.
Actually it's Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia.

Sydney has nothing to do with it. Just happens to be the nearest big city.



TS, pity that you didn't capture more of the valley. Personally I feel that the lookout point at the Three Sisters is badly constructed. The cantilever platform is so big that it cuts off a lot of the view below, thus losing that sense of perspective. It's a huge and deep valley. Certainly not as big as the Grand Canyon, but still fairly deep.
I prefer another lookout point nearer the town of Leura. Not sure if the tour brought you there.