Don, that is a fantastic video! And I bet that your images look a lot better in full resolution (like them in the video already!).

I like the mixture of stills and videos in that 'album'. Very fitting for a photo shoot.

Prieni

The scene was asking for a graduated grey filter to darken the sky.
I have had a quick attempt at the pick, putting a white gradient from bottom to halfway, a black gradient from top to halfway. Both layers with layer mode soft light.
[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/spad_chngd.jpg[/IMG]

I think it does look a bit more natural. With masks on the additional layers and some changes in the settings for the gradients I think one could get something more out of this shot.

Prieni

I think it is giving you both, the best and worst of HDR. Now, how to keep the best and get rid of the worst? Tricky one.
I also would like to have a look at one of the non-HDR versions.
This could well be a case for a manual HDR as described in this thread.

Prieni

Great insight you're giving here. Thanks a lot.
I thought you had gone away from Pentax. Did I miss something here?

I enjoyed looking over your shoulder for this shoot and the resulting images are great. (But I guess you know that already ).

Prieni

Second one is nice enough, but same as hefty1, nothing to lead your attention to.
RR's crop is fab, even though I liked the first pic as is, when I saw RR's crop it got a little wow from me. I would keep the colours though.

Prieni

Stefan, don't worry about it too much. There are several possibilities:
1. You have seen a similar photo some time ago but forgot about it. It came back to you when you were thinking about this competition but disguised itself as a new idea.
I know it has happened to me before and you only can be convinced about it when you have some means to re-trace when or where you did see it.

2. You had an original idea but someone had it before you (or around the same time). Happens all the time and this is the reason why when you put in for a patent the patent database is thoroughly searched whether there is a patent of that kind in already.

3. The other guy is mistaken. (Have you seen these other photos?)

In any case I don't think it's worth putting effort in following this up. Just move on to the next idea.

And no, I haven't seen an image like that before. That is proof of nothing, though.

Prieni

I'm with you here, the halos around the branches brighten the sky too much. It's annoying as the scene is very nice

Prieni

I think you found an excellent use for HDR here. I can see also some artistic merits in this shot.

Prieni

For some heavy PP of Pentax users look here.

What's wrong with overt-the-top processing? I do enjoy that from time to time. Wouldn't want to do that for every single image but sometimes do enjoy it thoroughly.

What's wrong with post processing? Why should it be considered better if a bunch of Japanese engineers at Pentax decides what's best for the particular image I take? Where does the notion come from that only bad images need PP?

One example. When I took this shot (this is the post SilkyPix version already)
[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/_PRI7750o.jpg[/IMG]

it was not what I had envisaged when taking the photo. So I applied some PP to make it what I had imagined at the time of taking the shot:

[IMG]http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t5/Prieni/_PRI7750.jpg[/IMG]

Does it look realistic? No, it doesn't. But that is how I wanted it to look.

I for one are one Pentax user loving Photoshop.

Prieni

Mike, I did see that one earlier. Well done!

So far I only got one pseudo-HDR in.

Prieni