Thursday, July 10, 2008

Contest Entries Pt. 1

I was told a couple of times that I should enter some photos in local photo contests. I thought I'd give it a try.

Here are two of my potential entries. I'll be going back for more photos in hopes to get some better shots.

Both of these files are HDR images. I took three exposures of each scene and combined them using Qtpfsgui.


Sunset2

Boardwalk-corrected

I'd love to hear your comments and criticisms. Feel free to tell me what I could do to make these shots better, either by editing or by recomposing and shooting them again.

UPDATE: After uploading these, I noticed they were straight and both had unnecessary tree branches poking in on the left side. I cropped and straightened them. You can see the originals here and here.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you did a great job in both of these shots.

1st picture:
I like how the sun is not centered. I also like how it almost tells a story... there is happiness on one side of the lake? and there is a storm coming in on the other side. I think HDR was a good use for this one.

2nd Picture:
I like this one the most. I love the sunbeam on the boardwalk. I noticed that the branch follows the rule of thirds which is great for leading the eye to the board walk to see the sunbeam. In fact the branch is in the sunbeam! There is some nice contrast there between the darkness of the foreground and the brightness of the background.

Love em both! Hope you get some great results!!

~His4ever~

John Brainard said...

Thank you for taking the time to comment and writing why you like the shots. I always hope more people would do that so I can understand what they like or dislike about them.

I noticed on both photos there's a little bit of tree on the left sneaking into the shots. I think I'm going to crop them out and straighten the first one.

Unknown said...

thats so funny. I did not even notice it... but that would be important to get rid of for a contest... or just in general. Sorry I missed that!

Your Welcome!

~His4ever~

John Brainard said...

Thank you Kristie. I fixed 'em and updated my blog. Hopefully the new ones look better.

Craig Lee said...

Nice shots. I haven't tried any blended or HDR yet myself.

John Brainard said...

I have run into many situations where I thought the scene was nice and wanted to capture it. When I got home, I couldn't get a decent exposure out of it because there was too much range that my camera can't capture. I started taking bracketed shots in those situations. The HDR seems to work pretty well so far. I'm still learning what works and doesn't and trying to figure out a usable work flow.