Hay HDR

[casil403]

So I posted an earlier version of this shot in a different thread but was so unhappy with the result I just couldn't bring myself to keep it up.
Messed around with it again in HDR, PSE7 (some attempts at layering and merging) then into LR for some Final PP.
Not sure if I like it still but it is much better than the first attempt.
Feel free to throw your thoughts out on this one...,it's way more PP/editing than I ever do in post work and I've never done any kind of layering before so this is the first attempt at that also. I think the saturation is still too high and I've tried like mad to get rid of as much noise as possible without losing any more detail...noise is a huge pet peeve of mine in my photos.
So here ya have it.....

[jjeling]

Yeah there is quite a bit of noise there. Maybe a little too much sky for my liking. otherwise I think you did a good job.

[Bambi]

I like the hay but the sky is noisy. I bet that others will have some good suggestions for improvement. You can try to select just the sky and remove some of the noise. I do second JJ's advice of cropping out some of the sky.

[casil403]

Thanks...this pp stuff is hard....I'm not a huge fan of doing it but i do like the look of it sometimes. Personally I would rather read medical texts as this seems a bit too much like work...lol!
So here's an HDR I converted to black and white and again did some pp in PSE7 and LR.
Any more interesting?

[casil403]

Lol...guess not...

[kat]

If I recall..the first one you have up in original (non HDR) format which I liked!

Love the dramatic sky in the second one..goes great over the gorgeous mountains. I find that there may not be enough mid tones though. Much prefer the second one

[Bambi]

tsk tsk Casil you are too impatient. I just got back home!

and yes it's interesting I like how all the lines lead to the mountains and sky.

[Mad Aussie]

Hey Casil ... as an experiment ... if you would like ... email me the bracketed shots you used for the Haystack shot and I'll see what happens when I run it through an HDR merge and PP it a bit.

[casil403]

You got it...PM me with an email.

[Mad Aussie]

Ok ... here's my go with it. I could probably fart around a bit more and try different shots for the HDR but this one is ok I think?

I dropped out one of the bracketed shots you took Lisa ... the really dark one. I think that one was creating the noise issue. I could probably drop out another one as well and get a different look again.

This has been in PS of course and had some tweaks done. I could have sharpened it a bit more I think but it does give you a comparison at least. The clouds at least look natural now.