before and after shots/Canon DSLR + CS5

I've put together some before and after shots as a short youtube slideshow, some of my landscape shots mostly taken around Yorkshire area.
Let me know what you think - some of the CS5 edits are pretty extreme
CS5 Edited Landscapes.mov - YouTube

Very nice. You like your moody skies, don't you!

For me, the pick of the bunch has to be the lighthouse shot, good work on removing the people from that one.

Chuckoir said:

Very nice. You like your moody skies, don't you!

For me, the pick of the bunch has to be the lighthouse shot, good work on removing the people from that one.

Click to expand...

I was pretty impressed by that too. Some really nice shots. I think I have a few shots somewhere from that same market - about 2:07 in.

This is meant to be constructive criticism, and I hope you take it as such:

Personally I'm not a fan of heavy processing, but that's not where the criticism would take aim. A bunch of the shots themselves I like, just not really the processing... not my cup of tea. Though one I do like a lot is the mountain side. Processing worked very well on that one. Some of the sky shots have blown highlights and gradations, which (for me anyway) is a distraction from the actual scene.

What I think would improve these for the most part is the use of graduated filters. The foregrounds in most of these are very underexposed, but at a level that isn't close enough to what would make a good horizon silhouette. At least with a filter, you can expose the sky properly while maintaining that effect.

Doug

Thanks for the comments Doug and the time to watch the slideshow. A lot of my pics have some graduated filters photoshopped in to the foreground which I think help lead the eye better into the picture. I know the over-blown HDR look is not everyones taste, and some of mine are a bit clumsy and overdone at times, I do quite like the blurring of boundaries between photos and art. Maybe I need to be a bit more restrained on some of the skies!

I'm not thinking you need to necessarily be more restrained, after all I quite like Dave Nightingale's (rather heavily at times) post-processed work. I agree with Doug though, having an actual filter would allow you to not blow out the highlights in the skies, while still not going to a full silhouette.

All in all, I quite enjoyed the slideshow and quite miss Yorks. Oh and let's see some more!

I'll add a graduated filter to my birthday list - thx for the feedback, I'll post up in a few more months with some more - think its a good theme for a short Youtube movie.