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WINNER
Photographer: Alia Naughton
Title: Wheat Field
Camera: Canon EOS 350D0
Comment:
Hi Alia, I'm pleased to see you can go to a tourist magnet like Stonehenge and still keep your eyes open for other interesting photos along the way.
Now, at a guess, I'd say you've added a new sky to this landscape. The giveaway is the geometry of the paddock and the sky, which appear to be converging too quickly. Further, there is a thin white line on the horizon which is too sharp to be believable.
I have nothing against blending skies into landscapes; in fact photographers have been doing it for decades, long before digital was ever thought of. However, if you’re going to do it make sure you do it well - that means making sure the sky and the foreground are shot with similar lens focal lengths.
From your email I know that you shot the foreground with an 18mm lens but my hunch is the sky was shot with a longer lens. I can't fix that but I do have some other suggestions that might improve the look of the image.
Start by applying a black-and-white filter. (Keep the image in RGB mode so that you can add a sepia tone or similar effect later.) Create a new layer and using the Lasso tool (set to about 30 pixels of feather) select the narrow strip of sky just above the field. With the Bucket tool fill this area with a light to medium grey tone then pull back the opacity of the layer so that it looks like a misty distant sky.
About now I would add a vignette to the picture. Keeping in mind that the top right of the sky is already dark, lasso the top left of the sky and now go to the Curves and just pull the middle of the curve across a small amount to make that corner of the sky dark too. Good work!
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Photographer: Daniel
Location: Iluka, NSW
Camera: Canon EOS 30D + 10-22mm lens
Comment:
Hi Daniel, you say in your email that you made this image by combining three images into a High Dynamic Range (HDR) composite; this technique has become vogue in recent times but like any new technique it really does need to be used with care.
HDR images are made by combining several shots of the same scene, each captured at different exposure settings. The idea is to bring out more detail from the shadow, midtone and highlight areas of a scene. It's a useful technique, particularly when photographing high-contrast scenes, where information is commonly lost in the highlights or shadows.
The trouble for me is that the scene itself is not terribly interesting. It is a reasonable sunset, and those clouds add something, but for me there's no wow factor. My hunch is that by applying the HDR technique you have actually lost some of the original magic from this scene. Tone down the green in the foreground and then use the dodge and burn tools (preferably the new ones in CS4) to add more drama to those clouds.
The more you learn about photography the more you realise that you need a multitude of good ideas to create a successful image.
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Photographer: Rob Bryant
Title: Misty Murray Sunrise
Camera: Pentax *ist DL
Comment:
Hi Rob, what a great location! It's a shame, as you say, it was surrounded by a security fence. I think you've captured a special moment here, even if you did have to hold the camera above the fence to get the shot!
Perhaps we can blame the fence for the crooked horizon, which is about the only thing you need to correct.
To level the horizon, grab the Ruler tool in Photoshop and drag a line along the horizon. (The horizon is a bit hard to see in this image but you should be able to make an intelligent guess.) Now go to Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary. When the Rotate Canvas dialogue box opens, simply click OK without making any changes. Use the Crop tool to get rid of the extraneous edges. (Check out the tutorial "Straight and Level" in the printed issue of Digital Photography + Design for more tips on levelling a horizon.)
There are a lot of beautiful elements to this work and many different ways you can crop it, I would experiment with as many cropping options as you can and have fun with it...well done.
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Photographer: Weifeng Zeng
Title: Meili Mountain
Camera: Fujifilm S9500
Comment:
Good images often have a beginning, middle and end. This image certainly has a middle and an end but it lacks a good beginning. Those mountains jolt into the frame on the left but I'd prefer to see a more gradual build-up.
Perhaps this issue could have been solved at the time by panning left? There is one thing you could do to improve this image - crop out those blue bumps in the lower part of the picture. They don't provide any relevant information and they distract from the story in the upper half of the photograph.
I'm off to get some counselling now; it's depressing looking at these beautiful snow covered mountains when I'm stuck in the city!
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Photographer: Terry Robinson
Title: Sunrise at Mystery Bay
Camera: Olympus E330
Comment:
Ah, sunrise. Do you know that every minute somewhere in the world there is a sunrise? So, here is the big question Terry. What makes this sunrise different from all the others? If you answered that it's those two strips of land in the lower half of the picture, I agree. So why didn't you do more with them?
Sunsets and sunrises are the biggest clichés in photography and if you want to be a great photographer you need to avoid clichés!
Here is what I would have done if I had seen what you saw that day. I would have put my camera on a tripod, attached my longest lens (a trusty 80-200mm), and taken a series of images just of that strip of land. I would then have stitched the images together in Photoshop to create a panorama.
That great golden sky above the landform is almost irrelevant. People will recognise that the light was special when you put the landscape together.
If you have already made a large print of this photo my advice is simple; get out the scissors and cut off the top two thirds. That's looking better already.
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Photography + Design
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