Hmmm. Now you've got me wondering about mine. In my vision it's pretty dark (like the cloud is preventing direct sun from getting on most of the valley - which I think it was). But now I'm wondering if that's just because I've looked at it like that for so long I'm stuck on thinking that's the way it should be.

I might play around with lightening it some. But my artistic idea for it definitely isn't this light. Also I purposely dialed back a lot of the green in mine because it was bugging me. But I do like how your valley doesn't have some odd patches of that seem off on their lighting like mine. it flows a lot better and looks more naturally lit.

I guess that's the beauty of landscape photography at the higher levels like this where you're doing a lot of post work. Two people could shoot the same scene on the same settings and still come up with very different final products.

I'm very curious what others think about light vs. dark on this one.

I think that the lighting of the foreground in your original edit does seem a bit dark for being in normal daylight. I feel like scratchy's edit would be more similar to what I would expect my eye to see. Of course I wasn't there so its kind of hard to say.

Also its good to see you're using some high pass sharpening. It is really great for localized sharpening!

hmm although I do like your darker sky better...

I would like to see the 2 combined with a gradient map!

stitched... 2 shot pano

Mike, a decent article on exposure blending without using HDR software would be an interesting read for me. Also, I know next to nothing about focus stacking so I'd be really interested to read anything about that.

scratchy's version makes me look on more things in that image than the mountains tbh. Kind of makes the eye follow the valley and then up the mountain.

Like what you did to the second photo, much better than the original one.

I was thinking about both of these topics as well. So they'll definitely get pushed

Oh sweet - please keep us posted. Look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Haven't done a huge amount of photography lately, and haven't produced anything that I'm proud of from a technical standpoint, but as cheesy/corny as it is, I kinda like this photo:

All sorts of reasons to be proud of that photo, Gazillion, incl comosition, choice of DOF, subject matter, and probably, significance of subject matter.

FWIW, I like your most recent edit better than skratchy1's. Scratchy1's looks artificial to me - the shadows are too soft given the hardness of the light. (That hardness is evident in some of the well-lit parts of the shot.) This is an obvious effect of the lightening he did. I think yours looks more natural and believable. His seems more artificial.

I have a strong bias towards realistic photography. As a result I have trouble with a lot of highly processed images that don't hide the fact that they are highly processed. As a result, a lot of HDR work, for instance, does not appeal to me. However I have no trouble with good HDR or other processing that yields a result that looks natural.

I think your vision for the image, as you describe it, is just fine.

Thanks DTM

The one I did is definitely overdone as I did it on laptop from single jpeg. If I didnt have multiple exposures I'd probably take something like that and put it on top of an original at 40% opacity or so and see how that looked. My main point is if you don't bracket or are really good with GND filters then you are going to end up with underexposed parts of the image that really lose the detail of what you see when you are there.

Yeah the problem on that shot of Ranier is that I was standing on those weird rocks you see the foreground in kind of a precarious spot, and getting absolutely mauled by mosquitos. I had to burn (or is it dodge?) them out of every shot. So I wasn't really in the mood to set up my tripod.

Suzzer do you shoot RAW? Just curious what the chances are of you being able to recover perhaps a little detail in the area where the clouds have blown out. You're going to be hosed if you shoot jpeg, but you may possibly be able to recover a touch of detail if you shoot RAW.

Also, it just occurred to me to say something I ought to have mentioned to you a long time ago: you may well be happier and better off devoting any spare time you have to learning how to use Lightroom instead of Photoshop. Not only is it cheaper, but 100% of its features are designed for photographers, and I suspect you may find it more intuitive if the idea of wading through a whole bunch of Photoshop tuts is not exactly your idea of a good time. I would consider myself to be pretty darned capable in Photoshop, yet these days I still spend 95%+ of my processing time in Lightroom.

Yeah it's in RAW. I actually I'm getting a little dangerous in Photoshop. I like the masks and stuff. I think I will go to lightroom once I start doing a lot of processing and want an easier way to do the initial adjustments.

Could someone teach me the difference in shutter speeds with regard to still shots?

I understand that a 1/10000.sec is ideal for a crowd in a stadium with flying confetti and 1/8.sec can be used for motion blur but....

whats the difference between using 1/320.sec and 1/400.sec outdoors with a tripod when taking non moving landscape in the sunlight? If its about brightness why not just change the iso?

It's all about light...

1/320 vs 400 mean that a little more light hits the sensor with the same aperture and ISO.

Higher ISO means more noise, and we don't like noise

You have to look at aperture, shutter and ISO together to create the exposure you want, if you shoot wide open at say F2.8 then the shutter will be open a much shorter time than if you shoot at say F11. Instead of changing the shutter it's sometimes best to bump the iso up. For example you shoot indoors with poor lighting and you want a picture without motion blur. You set your camer to the lowest aperture possible (means more light will get through) and you set the shutter speed for the correct exposure. This will probably be way to low for a handheld shot to be blurless. So you let the shutter stay at like 1/125 but bump the ISO up to compensate for the higher shutter speed. Pic will be less likely to be blurry, but you will get more noise in the picture.

...damn TMI, but wtf

I think it's a good explanation

Thanks a lot! I'll have to read it over and over till I get it memorized. DSLRs are a bit intimidating with the number of options sometimes.

Oh btw with regards to my magic stuff, I've been editing a demo tape with footage from my dslr and older footage from long ago. Looks good so far and I'm almost done. Will let you know when I can show it to you.

those aren't "options". those are the basic camera features that have more or less been around since the invention of the camera.

Yeah well if you only know a point-and-shoot and them move up to a DSLR it's intimidating.

Blackchill, if you're the bookish type, then Brian Peterson's "Understanding Exposure" is highly rated and will pretty much explain all your exposure questions. Another option is Michael Freeman's "Perfect Exposure". I have both and would happily recommend either.

Not sure where you are in the world but I linked you to the US Amazon as it was probably a safe default.

Found a good series on youtube called Perfect Exposure for Digital Photography made by PhotoshopCAFE.

Part1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0daRdofOZo

Part2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aW0lk95pfI

Part3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6nUYEi-4Ks

Part4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axEKMV3cf58

Part5:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U7_xNpQLJ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYBNskAQGxQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keX2IhzY8AY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V60Sg6OzCpw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uRBzT_roO0

Part6:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6vOtVW08nM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4iqY1CUnmE

Part7:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CczhujQD6sk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBDDinnOzno

Think that was all of them

+1 on Gazillion's recommendation for "Understanding Exposure"

Suzzer is exactly right. I just got a DSLR after using a point and shoot all my life.

Anyway, gazillion and pele, thanks a lot. I wanted to ask for books and vids and you guys gave both. Awesome!