Bulgarian Landscapes

[Bart]

The two pictures below were taken a couple of weeks ago when I was traveling through Bulgaria. I really love my camera when I'm abroad and these landscapes help a lot.
Hope you like them as well. Tips and suggestions are welcome!

[Barefoot]

Ooh La La!

No critique needed for either of the two. In fact, the only thing I'd add...are frames.

[tirediron]

Have to agree!! Nicely done.

[Greg_Nuspel]

Both are very nice, I favour the first one just because I do

[Mad Aussie]

Spectacular scenery there Bart.

I like the composition in both photos also.

In shot 1 the orange grass doesn't appeal natural to me. Is that really how it looked or have you saturated the colours to get it that way. The warm orange colour seems to steal away the coldness of the scene I think.

Shot 2 appears to be an HDR merge I think due to a bit of halo near the craggy peak itself. If so, I would have expected the exposure to be better in the darker area of the photo.

Nice first post though so welcome to the forum.

[JAS_Photo]

Both are very nice. I like #1 more for the colours.

[Yisehaq]

The first one for me too, but both are nice.

[Bart]

First I want to thank Marko for this site and his podcast (I really enjoy it).

Thanks for the comments everyone! These are the first pictures I’m showing publicly after playing around for 2 years with my SLR and the digital darkroom.

Thanks Mad Aussie for pointing out the halo effect. I'm going to look into this to complete the picture.

Maybe a couple of technical details about these pictures...

Photo 1: Taken with my Canon 400D on manual and 28-135 lens @ 28mm, 1/125, F16, ISO 400
Enhanced the contrast using curves and dodging and burning. Sharpened the image (Unsharp mask) and change the hue slightly to get the warm/orange effect.

Photo 2: Taken with my Canon 400D on manual and 28-135 lens @ 28mm, 1/400, F7.1, ISO 100
Enhanced the contrast using curves and dodging and burning. Sharpened the image (Unsharp mask) and saturated only the sky a little bit (that's where the halo comes from ).

When I have time I will update these images so the Exif info is included in their Properties. I guess the ‘auto resize’ feature of this forum stripped the details.

[Marko]

Hey Bart,

Thanks for the compliments and welcome!

I like these shots and I prefer shot 1. Love the lower part of that photo;it sings. Shot 1 has even more potential imo than i see here. I think I'd leave the sky the way it is but I'd pump up the blacks in the mountains quite a bit.

Shot 2 is also nice but to my eye it has a very strong blue cast. The bottom of the photo also looks dark to me as MA mentioned.
Hope that helps and hope to see more of these great landscapes.
Marko

[scorpio_e]

I really like the first one. The comp really works for me.