Roof Top Whipping

[pemmett]

What d'ya think? This was taken from my roof top (I live in a very tall building in Manila, Philippines) overlooking the city and bay. I'm trying to capture a great sun set shot from my place. How can I improve on this sunset?

Cheers/Peter

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/447018522_a07673ce63_o.jpg

[gus]

G'day peter...do you have a processing programme such as photoshop ?

[pemmett]

G'day peter...do you have a processing programme such as photoshop ?

Yes, I've tried doing a few things to enhance it already. Any suggestions to imrpove it?

[gus]

Yes, I've tried doing a few things to enhance it already. Any suggestions to imrpove it?

Yeah...maybe if you want you can post it in the 'finishing school' forum for some advice in processing.

I can only see an improvement from a processing point of view as the photo to me anyway has almost no merit. Its washed out with smoke or some type of haze...i can see you have hooked into it way too hard with the 'shadows/highlights' tool probably as well causing the washout. The foreground is boring because of this haze.

Possibly wait until you get a day where the sun is under the clouds & reflecting back up under them with some colour.

[rutt]

Yeah, post an original to the finishing school. Did you shoot in raw?

Sunsets are hard because you usually want to get detail in three different zones: the sun itself wants to have color and not be completely washed out, the sky wants great color, and the foreground wants details.

Because these three zones cover a very wide range of brightness, you need to do something that approaches each zone separately. This shot would be a natural for HDR where you use a tripod, take multiple shots at different exposures, and finally combine someway to get the best detail from each shot. Google for high dynamic range and you'll find lots of advice about doing this. If your capture has good information for each of the zones, you can probably achieve much the same effect with some fancy post processing.

In your shot, I want the sky to be lighter and more colorful. I want the sun to be nearly blown out but still very yellow instead of white. The city itself? Is it really very hazy? If so I'd like to see that. If not, I want better shadow detail.

[pemmett]

#1 - This is the image with increased contrast and removing the highlighting on the city.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/228/447212959_3279554b3c.jpg


#2 - This is the original image from my fist post with increased contrast.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/217/447206884_32883f1d79.jpg

Unfortunately it is this hazy here in Manila due to polution, however I'll keep trying.

Any other pointers in terms of composition, etc.

Thanks/Peter