# Marina in HDR



## Rick50 (Jan 25, 2013)

I drove the 40 miles to take something last night hoping the clouds would break. The full moon was unfortunately behind the clouds. Well, the clouds didn't break so I too a few anyway. I used a 2 stop neutral density filter to slow down the shutter to get the calm water. That worked well. I also have now learned how to get rid of the grainy appearance to hdr. These are 3 shot images processed in Photomatix Pro. Canon 5D, MkIII and Tamron 24-70mm zoom.


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## Parker219 (Jan 25, 2013)

Id say these are very well done. I think you were able to pull a lot of details out, even with the low light.
Just in case some one says that they don't like the rocks in number 2, im saying that I DO like the rocks, and wish there was more of them actually. 

If I had to nit pick, id say to clone out the red on the top of the building in picture 1.It is the only thing that color and draws my eye there.

Oh and after looking again, id say remove the pink lights out of the water on both. Just my opinion. 

Again, I love this tone and glad to see a shot like this verse the typical bright sunset pic any day.


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## EmmaBproductions (Jan 25, 2013)

Number 1


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## Parker219 (Jan 25, 2013)

^^ With c&c like that ^^ lol....Never mind.


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## Parker219 (Jan 25, 2013)

Lights


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## Parker219 (Jan 25, 2013)

Boats


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## Parker219 (Jan 25, 2013)

Water


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## RobN185 (Jan 25, 2013)

Both are good, and well worth the trip.

#2 on my monitor seems a little flat, I hope you don't mind, I have taken the liberty of applying a little pop.


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## amolitor (Jan 25, 2013)

The first one is a picture of what, exactly? There seems to be a boat in the middle of the frame, is this about the boat? Then there's a ton of clutter around it, piles of other boats. Then there's some good sized buildings in the background which are also pretty interesting. And then there's the four bright lights. What am I supposed to be looking at, here? Several things want to dominate, but fail to. Without the large boat, I would buy this as a photograph of "the waterfront" as a whole. Which brings us to:

The second one, which is a nicely stacked set of elements. Rocks, water, boats, buildings. It's quite small on my screen, so I am unsure of what it really looks like, but it feels like it's more of a gestalt "this is the waterfront" which an interesting vertical feeling. Waterfronts are normally horizontal, but this one has the tall buildings behind, so I like what you're getting at visually, here.

The HDR doesn't really do anything for me. It seems to me to flatten some potentially beautiful light out to blandness. Technically it looks solid, though!


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## Rick50 (Jan 25, 2013)

Parker219: Yup, just love this time of day.
RobN185: Looks good, you did about the right amount.

Thanks for the feedback....


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## Rick50 (Jan 25, 2013)

amolitor said:


> The first one is a picture of what, exactly? There seems to be a boat in the middle of the frame, is this about the boat? Then there's a ton of clutter around it, piles of other boats. Then there's some good sized buildings in the background which are also pretty interesting. And then there's the four bright lights. What am I supposed to be looking at, here? Several things want to dominate, but fail to. Without the large boat, I would buy this as a photograph of "the waterfront" as a whole. Which brings us to:



I agree, the 1st one is a bit busy and your eye tends to dance around. Good observation. If I back out and see only the boats against the buildings it presents a little different view but I guess I'm stretching it...


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## Mully (Jan 25, 2013)

I would say your efforts did not go without a reward...very nice tones and quality.


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## rexbobcat (Jan 25, 2013)

amolitor said:


> The HDR doesn't really do anything for me. It seems to me to flatten some potentially beautiful light out to blandness. Technically it looks solid, though!



I don't mean to get all controversial on a Friday, but I think that has to do with the "photograph all of the dynamic range!" mentality, to where the photograph goes from being pleasantly contrasty to foggy and washed out, especially in the shadows. I mean, shadows are dark in reality, regardless of how my DR there is in the scene. 

I do like the edit better though. It looks a lot less flat.


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## FanBoy (Jan 25, 2013)

I also question the need of HDR in these photos. I think you'd get more "pop" by trying to shoot at a more appealing sunset and creating some dark shadows against the lights; it would create more mood to the photograph. There's simply too much blue/gray in these photos.

The ND filter turned out well, but watch excessive blur in the clouds, especially with bracketed photos.



Rick50 said:


> I also have now learned how to get rid of the grainy appearance to hdr.



Could you please comment further? I'd like to know.


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## Derrel (Jan 25, 2013)

Parker219....batting .300 in the bigs!!!!

I think these photos look too light...too bright...almost as if they were shot at maybe around 3:15 PM _at night in the afternoon_...ya know what I mean????


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## Rick50 (Jan 25, 2013)

FanBoy said:


> I also question the need of HDR in these photos. I think you'd get more "pop" by trying to shoot at a more appealing sunset and creating some dark shadows against the lights; it would create more mood to the photograph. There's simply too much blue/gray in these photos.
> 
> The ND filter turned out well, but watch excessive blur in the clouds, especially with bracketed photos.
> 
> ...



Here is the middle photo without any adjustment. Your welcomke to try it.
What I found in Photomatix is to turn  off all the options like "Align source Images, Remove ghosts, Reduce noise.." and then don't make big adjustments. Also shoot 1 stop apart for images.

Good point on the clouds. I hadn't thought of that.




This should be able to be edited OK. As the sky gets darker then it gets harder and harder to deal with the dynamic range. 

Here is a similar photo taken about 15 minutes earlier without HDR. I think it came out better here without HDR.


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## Parker219 (Jan 25, 2013)

Wow, I like the last photo the best! HDR would maybe bring out more detail in the rocks but the overall image composition is really nice.


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