Every 3 months or so there's a frenzy of activity within our local club and photographers with aspirations across the country. I speak of the RTE Weather Photo Competition. The summer event is just about to close for entries and the image above is what I've sent on. Does it look over done - yes, of course it does. What I've found is that the image is half covered by the presenter of the weather for the few seconds it's on and then there's a green band across the bottom of the image to show the presenters name. Something has to be strong to get by the initial selection process to survive being presented.
I first entered the competition for the spring of 2008. I was hugely surprised to come in 3rd runner up. I failed last summer but Autumn and Winter I reached the finalists selection with the Autumn image being presented throughout Christmas and was the first image of 2009. This spring I was again optimistic but failed...but my wife got her image in as a finalist.
The image itself - this was taken in a place called Cull Bank near Kilmore Quay, Co. Wexford. It was almost an accidental shot as I was out in a hide to take some photographs of local wildlife but they failed to play ball. This, I spotted going home and thought of a good composition to show it with.
The image was taken from 1 exposure where I upped the exposure in lightroom in a virtual copy and blended both exposures in CS3. I boosted the saturation of the yellows and reds, and "fixed" the fence across the sun. A run then of octave sharpening and masking for the edges of the fence and hey-presto. The original can be seen on my site, as ever.
3 comments:
wow, do i understand that you took just one exposure, and yet all that foreground detailed remained, despite the foreground so clearly underexposed?? that's pretty amazing. if so, then I guess it shows that detail exists in darkness.
Great picture!!!
Andrew, The detail was in the darkness - the before image you see was reduced in exposure to give the sky a palatable view. Obviously this darkened the foreground into oblivion which is probably a bit misleading. I will exchange the before shot to the original and thanks for your comments.
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