Would you please give a critique on this work?

[wunaladreamin]

Hey guys and gals, this shot is my first venture into the world of HDR. I know some of you have already tried this technique, and I would appreciate comments/critique you can offer. Thanks.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/213/491795769_41bf74f82c_o.jpg

[T-Bird76]

What are you looking to do with the photo? If your playing around just to learn new tips and tricks that's fine but if you were looking to upload the picture I'd stay away from it. The shot looks as though it was backlit when you took it. Given that fact most can't be saved, the colors are over saturated, there's allot of noise and the shot is highly over sharpened.

There's no reason to get fancy when you go shooting, if you want a good quality picture. Just follow some simple rules.

-Keep the sun to your back and on the plane.
-Speaking of sun, if it’s not out, either should you.
-Shoot in ISO 100 to 200, nothing higher.
-Shot in shutter mode 500th of a second to 800th, 500th should do fine.
-Ensure you know how to pan. It’s a moving object you need to move with it.
-Your camera isn't a machine gun don't use it like one. Plan the shot you want first and go for it. There's no reason to take a million photos of the same plane, four shots should do.
-Make sure you shoot during the right time of day. Moving into the summer means shooting early morning to about 11 (that's pushing it) and then from 3 on. Anything in-between is going to have some hard top down light.

As for editing again no need to get fancy. My workflow is the following.

-Level the photo if the horizon is off.
-Crop it down to 1200 or 1024, now I crop to 1200.
-Remove dust spots.
-Play with the levels and curves until the whites are their natural white.
-Add contrast, never more the 9, lately I've only been adding about 3.
-Add some saturation, only a touch 8 being the max in PS. It’s just like cooking adding too much and it turns out like ****.
-Sharpen; the amount you sharpen will depend on the original quality of the photo.

That's really about it.

[wunaladreamin]

Thanks. I'm not looking to upload. I'm very interested in the HDR technique just for the hobby end of it and I'm looking to apply the HDR to more than just aviation photography. At this point, I'm just learning the basics and am looking to pick up a few pointers along the way. Not editing at full size = mistake #1. Chalk that to over-zealousness with a new toy.

[GrummanFan]

There was a thread on HDR a while back, you might be able to get some info out of it...


http://nycaviation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4334&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0