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Help with a minor photo dispute

K

Keleko

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 26, 2008
1,928
2,768
While out running this morning I took this picture with my iPhone 4 in HDR mode. I say the bright grey sky is a distraction and diminishes the picture. A friend of mine disagrees and says it isn't problem. I know some people might even replace the grey with a blue sky from another picture. Personally I'm more likely to wait for a not cloudy morning (picture was made less than an hour after sunrise) and try again.

So my question/dispute is whether the grey sky is or is not a distraction from the rest of the picture. Maybe the streetlight is a distraction, too, though I wanted the light lit up for the picture for the effect.

5181177135_2943ea421a_b.jpg
 
depends, what made you stop your run and snap a photo? was it the line, the lighting, the color, etc?

when i look at the photo my eyes are drawn upward from the darkness at the bottom of the frame to the lightness at the top of the frame, following the line of the tree trunks.
 
I stopped because I liked the street light lighting up the leaves along with the available natural light. The tree below the light is brighter lit by it. The light goes out when it gets brighter, so there's only a short period of time I can take this shot. I used HDR mode to keep the bright sky and lamp from being totally blown out when exposing for the darker portions. For once HDR mode didn't wash out all the color, either.
 
in that case i think the sky might be a bit distracting, but you can just burn a bit of that away in lightroom or photoshop and that should help keep the eyes on down towards the lamp.
 
I do have the non-HDR. The sky is even brighter, and the tree detail around the top of the picture is lost in the bright sky. I'll post it later.

At the moment I don't have Photoshop or Lightroom to do any work on it. I have a cash flow problem right now. I'm hoping to get Photoshop Elements (can't spring for the full version) around Christmas, though.
 
you could probably get 3-4 months worth of free trials from the Adobe site if you install 1 program a month, plus any trials of aperture, ACDsee Pro, etc.
 
Am I the only one who doesn't find anything particularly appealing about that photo?

The sky isn't the problem, the overall composure is the problem.
 
Here's the original non-HDR exposure.

And finding nothing appealing about the photo is valid, too. I'm mostly wondering about the sky in the photo. I should probably have focused more on the light and gotten closer to it. But, since I was running, I was going for a quick shot so I could keep going.
 

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wilhelmreems said:
you could probably get 3-4 months worth of free trials from the Adobe site if you install 1 program a month, plus any trials of aperture, ACDsee Pro, etc.
Click to expand...

I've considered it. I'm afraid of getting hooked on a particular program when I'm not ready to pay for it. :)
 
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