To Dodge and to Burn...Overdone landscape?

FreeAnd..

I never really take much time to dodge and burn but i gave these two shots from Glendalough a blast of treatment. Didnt have much sky to work with and i should really spend more time to eliminate the hallo on the horizon in the second one. Nearly lost some fingers to frostbite for these shots and had no filters to help with longer exposures. All C&C welcome..

kjt

I really like these shots, no2 would be my favourite. I gotta take some time out to try this with some of my photo's.

Borderfox

Very nice, looks menacing much more cloud in the second one after dodging.

Xios

I'm liking the first one, it looks like the water is frozen over, shame you couldn't get more sky and clouds in it though

JMcL

First one would be me fave too. The grass in the foreground leads your eye into to frame, then on to the piece of land on the left, and the water also acts as a good lead in line, drawing your eye across to the right, then back to the mountains in the background.

I like the second shot as well, though the horizontal arrangement of the dead trees tends to cause my eye to stop there, rather than being led on.

Tonally they're both very good, nice work.

Even if you don't have filters, if you have a tripod, you can bracket and merge the shots later, so you can get good exposures for both sky and foreground

georgey

I really like them, great conversion and contrast

rabbitinlights

What settings wee used to get the shots?

I really like the second one.

FreeAnd..

Thanks all for the comments. JMcl, i know what you are saying about the bracketing but I was more on about a filter to allow me to stop down more to get a better affect on the water (something like a polarizer which i need to repurchase). Exposing for the sky didnt really give me much as it couldnt have been a plainer sky if it tried....

rabbitinlights, here is the exposure data from both shots

Exposure: 0.6 sec (3/5)
Aperture: f/22
Focal Length: 17 mm
ISO Speed: 50

Exposure: 1.3 sec (13/10)
Aperture: f/22
Focal Length: 22 mm
ISO Speed: 50

DeVore

For some reason I thought those were four panarama-cropped photos!

I like both though I find that style saddening, which is ok but too much of it would be, well, too much.

I think you could do some interesting crops like taking either pic and cropping out the far shoreline and all of the mountains and clouds, just leaving the water and foreground. I dunno, but I think it might look interesting. Love the eerie sad feeling that style exudes... very fitting for the subject matter too.

DeV.

DeVore

Actually, scratch that crop idea, I just tried it there and it doesnt work at all lol...

DeV.

Fajitas!

I really like them.

Dodging and burning worked perfect (but of course I'm gonna say that )

Second one is fantastic, do you have a bigger version?

FreeAnd..

Thanks Al, I do indeed..Just looking at the large version I can see some bad cloning of the hair on my sensor. I really should zoom in more. Let me know if you cannot access these, im not sure if these links work for me because I am logged into flickr..

Large
Large

Monster - be warned of download
Xlarge

Valentia

Thanks for the large link though the first "Large" is not a link.

I like these very much. They are the kind of stuff I'd try myself so I'm a bit biased. On the largest version there is a lot of sensor marks in the sky and the water in the foreground is ultra soft. As if there was a serious amount of cloning. That said that is usually what I find with my own when I think an image is finished.

They would look well framed big in a local hotel

GristlyEnd

I really like them both. Dodging and burning is still something I'm trying to learn (with little success at the moment). This might sound a bit silly but the first one looks like its built up of triangles (the grass, mountains, gravel, etc). Is there a technical term for this in photography

FreeAnd..

I know Danny, My sensor is absolutely filthy, on the top left there is an actual hair i think - have a look at the top right of this and you can see it clearer Hair.

There is no cloning on the water, was trying to get as long an exposure as possible on the water on purpose but that was what i got. Ideally i would have thrown a polarizer on and manually stopped down another stop or so.