Photos from Iceland (need some advice with processing)

rgiller

Hi all,

Spent the long weekend in Iceland and saw some pretty amazing stuff over there. I also took a lot of photos (~600). I'm relatively happy with how they came out but I think with a bit of processing I can make the good ones much better. So I was hoping for a bit of advice from you guys as to what kinds of things I should be doing here. I've got a 30 day trial version of Lightroom which I'll use for this stuff so any programme specific comments would be great. Basic things like cropping, straightening the horizon, etc I think I'm ok with but I haven't used the processing software much and any help would be much appreciated. Here's a few of the photos, with some comments underneath each one:



I think maybe darkening this one a bit would be good, or increasing the contrast between the mountain and the sky.



Here I need to fix the horizon and probably crop out the foreground, but I'd like to keep the people in it to give it a sense of scale.



I'd love to get rid of that yellow plastic bag but otherwise maybe sharpen it up a bit?



Maybe crop just around the people and geyser?



This might be cool if it was just a bit darker or maybe black and white. I think it gives off a desolate feeling, which is what it must be like for a lot of people living in Iceland.



Don't know what to do with this one but I like it for some reason.



Anyway, like I said, any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Paulw

Iceland is a mad place. The smell of sulphur in the air ... and the desolate landscape. A good time of year to visit though. I was there once, and would love to go back.

Some very nice images there.

I'm sure others will post advice for you.

elven

1, with the mountain:

The main thing to look at here is the foreground. It's not too sharp, and having so much of it takes your attention away from the mountain, and you don't really notice the little house either. If you were to crop most of the foreground away and have that little house just up from the bottom of the frame, it would give a much better sense of scale. I wouldn't suggest going too contrasty since you'll lose a lot of detail in the snow and the dark ground - and you also don't want to end up with a halo around the edge of the mountain.

2, the waterfall:

I'm not sure if there's a way you can brighten the midtones so that the area in shade on the right is a little less dull, maybe by bringing up the shadows. I think you can get away with cropping the foreground and going for a slightly panoramic type effect, losing a fair bit of sky too - i don't know if you can clone in lightroom but you could leave more space at the bottom by cloning out the top of that rock.

3, Bloke looking into the distance:

I think, apart from the yellow bag, obviously, that all it needs is a bit more pop - and possibly trying to separate him from the background. If you were using photoshop I could help but in LR i'm lost with that one i'm afraid Also, i know people hate haze but I think the mountains in the background are given more of a feeling of distance by being hazy so maybe don't be too hasty to get rid of that...

4, geyser:

I think you could afford to come in a little at each side, and crop out a good bit of that foreground too. Maybe a black and white would work well here. Fajitas is the man to help you with bw conversion in LR

5, lonely house:

You probably could do a good bw conversion of this but I think it would look great just half desaturated, and the foreground sharpened up a touch. There are lovely subtle colours in there that describe the landscape and the modd really well, to me anyway, and it'd be a shame to lose them altogether.

6, rock pool type thing:

Again, bw maybe, but I think the subtle colours and all that rock and watery goodness works great as it is. You could afford to lose a bit of that empty area at the top and a touch on the left to balance it up a bit, but i don't think it needs touched - maybe a little local contrast. I'm a bit useless again because I don't know how to do that in LR either, sorry!

I think you did well to put across the mood of the place - not ever having been there, i feel like i have a better idea of what it's like now. Good stuff.

nilhg

Nice set of shots, looks like a great place to visit.

I'm not going to comment on individual shots just yet, but some of them have a slight blue cast, I would reccomend that you make virtual copies of all the shots and experiment. If your originals were shot in RAW you will have a lot of latitude to work with. Use the basic panel in the develop module and especially the WB to get the look right then you can worry about cropping and cloning.
If you are not used to LR it might be worth downloading some preset and running through them to see if they give you the look you want, also look for a preset for your specific camera model, it can get you quite close to the out of camera JPEG look.

Come back and ask if you need any more info.

magicbastarder

the last one has some lovely tones, but there's nothing to hold your eye. the bottom left could be cropped out, but that doesn't help with the lack of a focal point really.

magicbastarder

also, the sun high in the sky hasn't helped - though i know that on holidays, you often don't have the luxury of being able to come to a spot when the light suits you.

Dades

Great stuff!

rgiller wrote: »

Here I need to fix the horizon and probably crop out
the foreground, but I'd like to keep the people in it to give it a sense of scale.

I had a play around with my favourite of your shots, but tbh, I think you only need to do what you've suggested already!

sheesh

I was thinking for the last one a fake tilt shift to make it look like a sea shore from very high up

rgiller

It actually is the shore of the blue lagoon: a very weird place where you pay to go swimming around in the effluent from a power plant! Check it out here. Thanks for the advice so far guys.

Dades, that looks great. Exactly what I was thinking of for that shot.

JMcL

You've done the tricky thing well, and got the exposure fine for the snow. It's a good set, and Iceland is an amazing place. Regarding processing, here's what I'd suggest:

#1: It's a little underexposed and lacks contrast. Brighten it up a bit and adjust contrast, for which the following can be done. Increase exposure until the histogram touches the right hand side (but doesn't clip) then increase black levels until the left edge of the histogram touches the left side. This is akin to levels in PS. You can also use curves for more subtle changes. I might lose a bit of the foreground as well

#2: I'd crop off the dark foreground, and add a bit of contrast. Maybe a bit of fill light to bring up the shadows

#3, #4: Again I'd crop the foreground a bit

#5: I'd probably crop the bottom severely to a panorama. Tweak contrast also to add some pop

#6: I'd probably lose the left edge, and then play with contrast, vibrancy, and the HSL channel mixer to make those colours stand out

Fenster

I finally got around to having a crack at the house photo:

http://www.bhalash.com/files/pics/house_iceland.jpg

rgiller

That's pretty cool Fenster, cheers. Looks like you've cloned out the poles and fence posts and converted it to b&w. Anything else been done there?