yeah, i noticed those spots as soon as i had posted here. a wee clean in order i think

I too am uncomfortable with the left hand side, maybe a slight crop is in order?

I'm quite pleased with this shot, but i'd be interested in hearing peoples comments on the processing of the shot. I've bumped up the contrast and saturation a wee bit, but i've totally desaturated and tweaked the levels in the sky to get that deep contrasty grey look. I wanted to help give more mood to the shot rather than just have the bright blue sky that was there.

Do you reckon this is overprocessed, or about right?

This is from two handheld shots taken from Calton Hill merged manually with Photoshop CS4. Only other mod i made was to add red to the guys jacket in the foreground.

Any comments much appreciated.

really nice set there... hope you've got them framed

Great first attempts.

What the first image is lacking is something in the foreground. It would have been cracking if you had managed to get lower and down into the grass giving the eye something to lead us into the picture. Then you would have had something in the foreground, middle and background, as opossed to just the mid and back.

Great efforts though, keep on going.

thanks for all your comments. much appreciated.

dr mhuni, the clouds were adjusted slightly in photoshop, but not too much... it's pretty close to how i saw it. Just very surreal light that night.

Good tip about the border... I thought it would help with the tones in the image, but i guess looking at it, the solid black line is perhaps a bit strong.

Being honest about the second one, it's not even the shot i went out to get. I wanted the sunrise coming up 90º to this shot, but i slept in and missed it by about 10 mins so set up the tripod looking south instead to avoid shooting directly into the fast rising sun. It was a bit lucky

C&C very welcome on the two shots below. Really like the first one, but not too sure about the second one so any tips on that one especially.




This is a view that is rarely taken in from Bo'ness looking north east towards the Knock Hill in Fife. Most people look north west towards the Trossachs and Ochil Hills, and i had gone out that night to take in the sunset and get a few pics. I turned round and saw the low clouds illuminated by the very low sun, set up the tripod and hey presto...





This is the view south that i see every morning on the way to work. Taken looking south towards the Pentland Hills from just outside Bo'ness. Very early morning with the sun just starting to settle upon the fields and burn the light mist away.

this is the kind of shot i'm talking about

http://www.flickr.com/groups/534604@N20/

i think i'll look into a polarising filter (didn't realise they also added a couple of stops) and an ND filter.

Some available on ebay for reasonable money.

Will keep you all posted. Thanks for the very useful info.

mostly i'll be using the filter on my kit Pentax 18-55mm II lens. don't have a lot of money - actually, don't have any money - to spend upgrading lenses so need to make do with what i have.

I want to be able to take long exposure daytime shots of waterfalls, waves, clouds etc.

Hi to anyone reading this )

I want to take some long exposure daytime shots so am about to buy an ND filter. I'm not really sure what strength to go for. There's calumet and hoya filters available pretty cheap on amazon so will probably go there.

Say i want to take anything up to a 10 second exposure on a bright sunny day, what strength of filter do i need?

Thanks for any help, as i'm pretty new to all of this.

Peter