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General Photography
Landscape
What to do with skies that don't quite work
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<blockquote data-quote="BackdoorArts" data-source="post: 220891" data-attributes="member: 9240"><p>I happened to bounce over to the <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/+NikPhotography/posts" target="_blank">Nik Google+</a> page today and saw this photo posted there...</p><p></p><p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-iB9QghAdzJE/UjvAbM84e1I/AAAAAAAAUyM/PdGyf-_vNI0/w2028-h1352-no/Orange+County+Sunset+%25C2%25A9+SHaggerty+2013+W-1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p>(c) Suzanne Haggarty</p><p></p><p>... and I was very taken by it. I was also perplexed by what I saw in the skies and the foreground and how it was produced while not losing the detail in waves. I wandered over to her Google+ page and saw many examples of this type of work and realized that she's working a lot with blurring parts of the photo using Photoshop to very interesting and creative effect. Some of it is definitely overdone, but a lot is very striking and reminded me of motion that I'd seen in long daylight exposures on cloudy and windy days. </p><p></p><p>That got me to thinking about how using this technique could be used to "save" photos that didn't quite work otherwise? So, I went back through my catalog to find something to mess with and came across this photo that I took the morning of the solar eclipse several weeks ago. It was taken just as the sun <em>finally</em> broke through the clouds (post eclipse) and was shining only on a golf course about a half mile from the hill I was on. Try as I might, I just never liked it enough to share it, particularly because I couldn't get the sky to look "right".</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]59745[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p></p><p>So, I took the photo and created a duplicate layer in Photoshop and applied Motion Blur to the entire photo. From there, I added a layer mask and filled it with black so that it masked the entire layer. I then painted white into the mask bringing back just the sky. It got a little tricky around the horizon, and while I didn't spend a ton of time with it I painted past the mountains and over blurred, and then painted black back with a softer edged brush until I was happy with the definition of the mountains. This was the result after about 5 minutes work...</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]59746[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p></p><p>It's still not great, but my dislike has migrated from the sky to foreground noise (I have a crop I like better, but it blows the illustration). <strong><em>But</em></strong>, at least I've stuck another tool in the kit thanks to looking at another photographer's work. It's not something I believe I'll use frequently as it teeters on the brink of where I like to live in terms of "truth in a photography", but I do believe that when used properly for effect it can be extremely useful.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BackdoorArts, post: 220891, member: 9240"] I happened to bounce over to the [URL="https://plus.google.com/u/0/+NikPhotography/posts"]Nik Google+[/URL] page today and saw this photo posted there... [IMG]https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-iB9QghAdzJE/UjvAbM84e1I/AAAAAAAAUyM/PdGyf-_vNI0/w2028-h1352-no/Orange+County+Sunset+%25C2%25A9+SHaggerty+2013+W-1.jpg[/IMG] (c) Suzanne Haggarty ... and I was very taken by it. I was also perplexed by what I saw in the skies and the foreground and how it was produced while not losing the detail in waves. I wandered over to her Google+ page and saw many examples of this type of work and realized that she's working a lot with blurring parts of the photo using Photoshop to very interesting and creative effect. Some of it is definitely overdone, but a lot is very striking and reminded me of motion that I'd seen in long daylight exposures on cloudy and windy days. That got me to thinking about how using this technique could be used to "save" photos that didn't quite work otherwise? So, I went back through my catalog to find something to mess with and came across this photo that I took the morning of the solar eclipse several weeks ago. It was taken just as the sun [I]finally[/I] broke through the clouds (post eclipse) and was shining only on a golf course about a half mile from the hill I was on. Try as I might, I just never liked it enough to share it, particularly because I couldn't get the sky to look "right". [ATTACH type="full" width="30%"]59745._xfImport[/ATTACH] So, I took the photo and created a duplicate layer in Photoshop and applied Motion Blur to the entire photo. From there, I added a layer mask and filled it with black so that it masked the entire layer. I then painted white into the mask bringing back just the sky. It got a little tricky around the horizon, and while I didn't spend a ton of time with it I painted past the mountains and over blurred, and then painted black back with a softer edged brush until I was happy with the definition of the mountains. This was the result after about 5 minutes work... [ATTACH type="full" width="30%"]59746._xfImport[/ATTACH] It's still not great, but my dislike has migrated from the sky to foreground noise (I have a crop I like better, but it blows the illustration). [B][I]But[/I][/B], at least I've stuck another tool in the kit thanks to looking at another photographer's work. It's not something I believe I'll use frequently as it teeters on the brink of where I like to live in terms of "truth in a photography", but I do believe that when used properly for effect it can be extremely useful. [/QUOTE]
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