Windmills along the Molendijk near Schermerhorn.
The background one was in my "The Four Elements" challenge entry. The foreground one is the same as in the "Wind" challenge entry.
Never really do Silhouettes so I didn't have a clue when or how to do it. I assumed that sunrise or down would work with some underexposure.
I was actually still to early when I took this. The as shot version is very underexposed. The underexposure wasn't that apparent on the camera's LCD and I don't know how to judge this kind of underexposure from a histogram yet. The scene measured about 1/200s @ f/8, I shot it at 1/1250s. That's about 2.5 stops underexposed.
So the exposure on the windmills and landscape is real, I just brightened the sky by a stop or 2 and darkened the left flanks of the windmills a bit (a bit = not much). Downsides of doing that is a very noisy sky. I tried to hide that with two passes of gaussian blur on the sky only. Also upped the saturation a lot with a double Velvia action.
I don't expect it to do to well, because it is obviously a somewhat fixed underexposure. Not a true perfect silhouette exposure. But practice makes perfect, won't make the same mistakes next time.
Editing:
Shot as NEF, run trough Nikon Capture 4.2.1
Only adjusted the whitebalance to standard Daylight and sent it to Photoshop as an 8 bit file.
PS 6.0
- cropped to I think 30x17 aspect ratio
- Magic wand selection on the dark parts (easier than the sky, because I also need to select the wing pattern)
- Inverse selection
- Layer overlay mode, 50% grey
- two stage brightening of the whole sky with a white brush
- brightened some of the landcape a bit
- darkened the left sides of both mills
- darkened the clouds a bit
- flatten
- Gaussian blur 2px
- step back
- history brush on the sky
- Fred Miranda Digital Velvia setting 10 (=high)
- Resample to 640x480
- Another small gaussian blur on the sky
- Contrast USM
- USM LAB lightness 75% on 0.3px
- Save for the web
Date: 14.05.2005 at 19:05:13 (20.15 real)
EV +0,33 EV
Program: M - Manual
35mm Focal length: 46 mm
Image Quality: RAW
Focus Mode: AF-S
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Wonderful composition! I really like this shot, though there's too much detail IMHO to call this a silhouette. Lovey shot with some great colors and excellent clarity.
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