Image made in Alentejo, near Guadiana Valley Natural Park, Portugal
(Parque Natural do Vale do Guadiana)
Dramatic, colorful sunset on a slope massively covered with spring violet wildflowers. I tried a conceptual composition, centering the Oak tree having it backlit by the Sun setting just behind, while the wildflowers are brighten, lit by golden light.
Technical details:
In the field:
No filters were used
Used tripod, cable release, and wide angle lens on Nikon Dx camera, set to 19mm wide
Processing:
2 exposures manually blended, taking hours of pacience, working masks around the tree and bushes.
Images taken at:
f/22 1/20s ISO400 WB - 5100 Kelvin
f/22 1/3s ISO400 WB - 7140 Kelvin
Different color temperature blend, between the sky and flowers, these flowers tones are tricky to shoot having a truthful color rendition, those are hard tones to work with and get it right.
Brief Note about the capture
This is one my most difficult processing, technically, to make the blends work well. This is because the tree and bushes come from the exposure for the ground, mixing with the sky and deal with the sun hot highlights wasn´t an easy task
Some ND filters could be applied in the field, but I wanted to preserve every detail and color - all dynamic range - from sunset light to the darker Oak branches, using a ND filter would turn my tree black
I´m receptive to all your feedback, critiques highly appreciated.
Thanks for your time.
Comments
42 commentsBest regards
excellent shot,colors and pp.
My only nit is that my eyes would expect to see a bit less of detail in the tree and bushes along the horizon line, since the sun hits them from behind.
Giovanni.
1) crop up from FG until half cut off flower in LRC is gone
2) clone or crop from left hand side small brush silhouette protruding in
3) crop down sky from 1/4 - 1 inch whatever your preference
4) there are some inconsistencies in color in the leaves around the perimeter of the tree - I am specifically referring to the ones on the left handside just above where the sun is setting.
Overall, this very impressive. I am sure you spent many hours getting this right. Hopefully my suggestions can help you fine tune it even more! Congrats - Michael
I think you did a great job here and it's worth while all your hours of work.
The blend looks really excellent but that's really hard to tell from web-presentation.
Replying on some items asked,
@Roberto
Wind. Too much wind is the answer. I tried to have a good balance between image quality - not working with a high ISO, avoiding at most grain/noise - but at the same time I wanted a "faster" shot due to the quick movement in the plants... Even there I had to expose at 1/3 sec. ! But I managed to capture almost "static" and good definition in the wildflowers.
@Pavel
Well... some time ago I checked here in NPN, and there are some articles or posts in support forums about it, even providing external links to blends technique.
Read more here:
Manual Blending
and here:
Blending Multiple Exposures for Dynamic Range and Depth of Field
Anyway, my technique is fully manual, working with masks, changing brush sizes down to 5 or less pixels and opacity to lower values also, to an average minimum of 10%. A lot of work, method, patience, in a scene like this, with lots lots of detail from the tree and sky. And then there was the light...
@Giovanni
Yes, indeed, after processing it crossed my mind the final result had kind of an HDR feel, but I guess this is pretty close the scene as my eyes viewed there in the field
@Phil
About the halo going around the tree. That´s interesting, because on processing I didn´t push that much contrast to have an uncontrolled halo. I suppose it´s really the light effect, and in original version, isn´t noticeable...
Thanks for all feedback
After reading your comments about some cropping, I re-framed the scene to 5x7 format, not sure about final result, I guess it´s working well on both versions, but here it is. Also made a slightly sky cloning in the left side bushes.
See you next monday!
@Steve
Its a beautiful spring image.
I also must ask, why ISO400. When you're trying to get the most dynamic range from a digital sensor, the lower ISO is where you want to be.
Wonderful composition and I cringe at the amount of work you must have put in to this blend. I do like the crop version better, as it is much stronger in the FG. I do however still see someshat of a halo around the top of the tree due to the blend. I don't know if it is worth trying to remove, but in a larger print it will be noticable.
Congrats
D&L
This is a gorgeous wildflower/sunset combo image. Like others have said, thanks for sharing the processing info and congrats because all that work has paid off. And I must say that you perfected the image even more by taking some of the feedback and re-working the image. It's even better and you took care of any tiny suggestions I may have had. Beautiful!
Lon