Hay Stacks
by Graham Leggate on Dec.10, 2009, under Photography
A few weeks back when we were holidaying down south in Capel, I took a few photo’s of some bales of hay in the paddocks. None of the images really turned out… I’ll blame the light :) Tonight I thought I would try to rescue at least one of them. Not sure if this would be classed as rescued, but hopefully it’s not total rubbish, but it could be, I’ll leave you to judge for your self!
December 10th, 2009 on 11:25 pm
Nice one Graham, what is the process to get it to that stage? By the way picked up the 7D and saved about $1300, so a good win.
All the best,
Andrew
December 11th, 2009 on 11:12 am
Thanks Andrew. Basically the image started as a rather flat scene, which I edited in CS4. I played around with some levels to boost the contrast to start with, I then put a blue grad filter to try to bring back some colour in the sky, because it was washed out, at this point I was still hoping to save the colour version. I duplicated the background layer and created a mask to modify the brightness and saturation of the hay. After a while I realised the colour version was still looking quite sick, so I moved to creating a series of black and whites and applying a selenium colour cast/finish. Eventually I settled on creating a blend of the colour version and the selenium version, by changing the blending opacity and using masks around the hay bales and playing with the saturation, red, green, blue, yellow and cyan sliders on the two layers. I think I created 4 different versions of this image, but I think the one I posted is my favourite. However I was thinking this morning it might look quite good to just have the front bale of hay in focus and have the image look as if it was shot with a TS lens.
December 11th, 2009 on 1:13 am
Hello Graham,
Sharp warm contrast of colour and light amidst a cushion of Wintery Greys. Good shadow effects.
Brian.
December 11th, 2009 on 6:38 am
Really like the row of native grass running along the bottom edge. Makes for nice framing with the contrasting tree line at the back. Shame there were not a few less bales in the frame, but that isn’t your fault.
Great piece.
December 11th, 2009 on 7:04 am
I like the work you have done to this shot to make it work. Although I would class this as an arty interpretation
December 11th, 2009 on 11:14 am
Thanks Brian, Matt and Kheng for the comments.
and Kheng… yep, it supposed to be sort of arty… but I think it might still need a bit more mood.
December 13th, 2009 on 5:22 pm
awesome!!!