Emeishan

[acpical]

I took this picture last month at the summit of Emeishan. The scene was pretty peaceful (for me at least) and I wanted to capture the mood. The focal point is of course the Wanfo Temple overlooking the 'sea of clouds'.

This image is actually a composite of 3 pictures, each bracketed at 1EV apart. Each picture was unable to capture the gradations in the mist. I processed it using the HDR method in CS3 but I don't want it to look like a HDR. Further adjustments were made using curves.

The pictures were originally in colour but I figure it looks better in B/W.

I would like comments/feedback on the composition, post-processing and whether the picture evokes the message I was trying to capture.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

 

[lastboltnut]

Very natural HDR. I think the white cloud in the shadow of the mountain is too white as the contrast is too big. The temple is very small to be the main feature, but the cloud and mountain is nice.

 

[acpical]

That was my impression too when I looked at the re-sized file too. But when I reviewed the original file, I could just make out the sunlight that explained why the cloud was bright.

But I agree that it looks a bit out-of-place and the temple is too small to be the focal point.

 

[lastboltnut]

May be you have to print it big, real big to appreciate the scale.

 

[drakon09]

What's it like in colour?

Personally, I think the sky is a little too clean for B & W; but is seems to have a nice gradation from deep blue to light blue before finally meeting the cloud layer.

The other thing is that there is some slight haloing of the mountains and temple - I assume the sun was behind the mountain?

 

[yehosaphat]

Perhaps you can post the original one in color? I personally would prefer this in pano, that is to crop the top n the bottom

 

[night86mare]

hdr will give you unnatural coloration.. unless you spend a lot time in curves/color balance.. most of the time anyways. that's probably why he put it in b&w

i like the mood of the picture, i think the composition is fine. but something is wrong to me. and i can't figure out why, so the only thing i could come up with is that there is probably a little too much space above the mountain. maybe a little less would be great

 

[acpical]

Can't find the original colour composite file now, guys. It must be lost when I merged the layers.

Correct, the sun was behind the mountain and the light came through the saddle between the peaks.

But I got the 3 original colour pictures. Apparently, it's not that many steps to merge these pictures. From +1EV, 0EV to -1EV (with default -0.7EV on the D80):

+1EV

0EV

-1EV