A very British scene

I went to the Indoor 4X4 Show at Donington Park last weekend and, as I was driving out, I saw this view and just had to park up, trudge and slide across the soggy field and capture it.


K5ii(s) + DA*16-50

whether you wanted the Land Rover in the picture or not, I think the image is beyond the tyre tracks. They spoil the picture for me. Although it would take more than a little devotion to walk past that mud in the wrong shoes

Its a challenging one there Ralph, exposure wise. Unfortunately you've lost the battle I think, the strong backlighting has washed out the sky and background (did you de-saturate there?) - the sky's gone really. It could only be done with ND grads or multiple exposures I feel.

My feeling on this one is similar to Nigel's - it looks over-exposed. I wasn't there at the time so clearly can't say exactly what the conditions were, but the K-5iis has so much latitude that I think you could have exposed for the sky and recovered the shadow details in post processing. In terms of composition, I would prefer it with a far tighter crop, losing some at either side, but particularly on the left. This would remove what looks like a raindrop at the far left centre.

Regards
David

There aren't many tones left in the sky to work with, with something like this I tried to pull out colours and contrast bit, and crop.

That works better for me as a composition.

Regards
David

Mono?




Philip

The sky doesn't look blown to me. The background looks hazy and therefore rather flat butI think the sky is a good one to work with. I'd take the highlights down only a fraction then increase the black levels in the sky to boost the contrast. I'd lose the muddy slice at the bottom. The composition doesn't really flow for me as the Landie and the tracks seem entirely disconnected and therefore competing rather than complementary elements.

Thanks for all the comments and edits

For those of you that want to play with the original RAW file, to see if you can do better than me, you should be able to download it from here: link.

Gravelrash, the actual point of the photo was to capture the Land Rover against the british countryside. Without it I wouldn't have stopped

It's funny that many of my friends (Land Rover fans) have been very complimentary about the image. It just goes to show that we all see things in a different way.

A wider view, taken a few seconds later gives this:


Which adds some context to the tyre tracks and makes it even more attractive to Land Rover fans

Nigel. I brought down the higlights, added a grad filter and desaturated . I also increased the clarity and brought up the shadows.

David the dynamic range was wide and so, as Nigel said, the best bet would have been an ND grad or bracketed shots merged in PP. Unfortunately I had the camera and one lens, we were tired, had a 4 hour drive ahead of us and my family were waiting in the car

gwing and MrB nice efforts now you can play with the RAW file if you like

I had a play with it in Lightroom and perfect effects.

The fact that there's so many versions speaks volumes.

Does it? Please enlighten us

It could mean one thing .... or the other

I must be in the minority but I think the low contrast, low saturation treatment suits this image best; so I prefer the original version. I agree that the the muddy foreground is a bit distracting though.

I rather like it. The tricky lighting which caused exposure diffcult, adds so much to the atmosphere.

There's a shot within a shot as well. If you clone-out the Land Rover and create a square composition centred on the tracks, then convert to monochrome...