Wasdale in October

...ought to be wet and horrible, but it wasn't!




This was an HDR picture from three shots combined in Photomatix




This is the result of four images joined in Autostitch. (Sorry about the scrolling!)

Great Shots.

RG.

I would like to see more contrast in the first image, and the far right section of the second is darker than the rest.

Wonderfull shots Tim I love No.2 I would hang that on my wall
Did you purposely add the shadowed area on the far right or was it just taken at a latter time : I like the effect

Very nice shots. If no.1 were one of mine it'd definitely warrant wall space.

Thanks for the appreciative comments.

The "problem" with the right-hand end of #2 was probably due a combination of the low angle of the sun (6PM on October 6th), a bit of low cloud and a slight change in angle of the rock face. The whole field of view is about seven miles. I also had a circular polarising filter on and I now realise this can be a bad idea for stitching panoramas together as you get graduation effects across each frame which can be hard to remove. I've been trying various tools (Autostitch, PanoTools, PTGUi, enblende ect) to see if any of them an do a better job of equalising the whole image.

If you put the following co-ordinates into google earth you'll see the vantage point. 54°26'32.80"N 3°19'17.96"W. It's a nice flat spot on top of a rocky outcrop, plenty enough space for a tripod and only a short walk from Greendale (where there is a handy space for parking the car!)

I find merging several portrait format shots easier than fewer landscape format ones, often using a 50mm lens. You still get a reasonable 'height', or vertical field of view, to the image, but with less lens distortion to try and deal with, so the edges match up well.

But your pano looks fantastic, and the first pic was nice too. Before I saw it was an HDR one, I thought something looked a little odd about the tops of the mountain and the clouds, especially on the right hand side, but tthis could be just as easily down to a polariser, or sharpening. Or just perfect light.

Good work that man!

Dan

Dan,

Yes as I have found through researching better ways of joining pictures together taking more shots each covering a smaller area seems the way to go, especially as the software does do a very impressive job of aligning the images.

I have an excuse to return to that viewpoint, though whether I get the same light and weather is another matter!

Shot #1? Perfect light (on the mountains). Maybe I should have cropped out most of the foreground.

No, I like the foreground too, just it's got that feel of HDR about it, and it was the look of the mountain/cloud junction that first made me aware of it. But, I like the image, although I think it looks slightly unnatural. That's not a criticism, just an observation.

Dan

Stunning pictures. Amazing what the right light and good technique can produce.

Gosh thanks people

Dan, the main "complaint" I have about HDR is that it tends to produce slightly* unnatural effects, because, well it is unnatural!

*well to look at some HDR images it can produce very unnatural images!