Tuesday, February 28, 2012

English Country Garden

Well if truth be told it's more like an English rural city garden but Oxford is very much a city of the countryside. This was pictured in the Botanic Gardens and though we visited there in the middle of winter, it's still a fantastic place to walk around and find a bit of peace. This is an HDR shot from 2 exposures (0,-2) and was largely post-processed in Photoshop and Nik Color Efex Pro.

As I alluded to in the comments section of the previous picture, the football result on Sunday did go my way and my team was victorious. Had an amazing day because of the result, however it's left me pretty exhausted and creatively a bit unenergetic. So this is quite a short blog today but will have plenty to talk about on Thursday, with it being a couple of days away from another exhibition of mine.

5 comments:

  1. I really dig the symmetry and texture. Somehow HDRs I've seen from Nik Efex Pro seem less glowy than Photomatix which is something I like. How do you find Nik does with tone mapping in general though? I know they allow for local adjustments which is a big plus, but overall do you find that you frequently have to tweak a lot before your happy with the Nik tone mapped image?

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    1. Thanks for the comment Andrew. Sorry for the confusion, this was processed as an HDR in Photomatix but was post-processed after that in Nik Color Efex Pro (the filter software). I do have Nik software's HDR Efex but truthfully I never use it now. Some photographers may prefer it but to me it gives a unique look that is simply not required by nearly all of my HDR's and Photomatix is always my HDR processing software choice. I know HDR's can be 'over-cooked' in Photomatix but it can also give very natural results as well, it's simply a case of not being over enthusiastic with the sliders. Landscape photographers who do not specialise in HDR still use Photomatix for natural looking landscapes to even up the distribution of exposure and detail.

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  2. I really like the natural look to this HDR Pete. Despite the season the image portrays a warm tone and it looks like a great place to take a camera. Glad you had a good day at Wembley!

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  3. Agree with ti, very natural HDR here Pete, nice job!

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  4. Thanks for all the comments guys, they are all much appreciated as usual!

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