Re: Fun With Sony _____
As you asked for C&C - I'll try...
(I'm no professional and don't have much experience. So any of my thoughts may be wrong or just subjective (I'm sitting in front of an uncalibrated screen, lol). If something sounds dismissive or simply not nice, it wasn't meant so. I'ts because of my bad english.
)
I love the series. I did see a lot of pics of this region and Tuscany is on my list to visit once. Your pictures does me remind at it very strongly.
1: Sunset
A850 + Min 24-105 D
scenery: wonderful! The bushes on the bottom may be distracting. If you want them on the picture, you need to process them better.
processing: It's too dark in the mids and dark areas. It looks like you ETTR to the sun and did not recovered the mid and dark tones later.
color: nice short before sunset tone. works fine here.
2: Misty sunrise
A850 + Min 80-200/2.8 HS G
scenery: a magical moment. It's my favorite
processing: the hill on the right is too dark and blue. it rivals with the houses in the center. I would try to lighten it up and turn it more green (like the other hills). Maybe less clarity for the whole picture.
color: the blue hour with sunset clouds. maybe a touch of more green and less magenta on the tint-ruler (and some more blue on the blue-yellow tone). But I like it the way it is too.
3: Light rays over the hills
A6000 + E16-50 PZ
scenery: there are three things of attraction: the road, the sunbeams and the tree group in the lower left. All in all, nothing that I can put together. I would try to crop on the road with the sun above.
processing: It has a quite artificial HDR look. The first hill is very nice. The second (with the road) has too dark midtones, almost no highlights and too much clarity. The third hill does not connect to the second one. At least it should get a part of the processing of the second. The sky works, maybe the darkest parts are a little bit too dark.
color: saturated green towards a desaturated blue. I often use this in landscape. But you have to recover the blue of the sky itself afterwards and get rid of any purple (or other color inconcistencies) in the clouds. At the end it should only have blue and yellow.
4: Evening light hitting the rolling hills
A850 + Min 80-200/2.8 HS G
scenery: I would just crop very slightly from the left. it's distracting to see hills going up, when the picture ends. As there is a small peak there, you can crop it to the left bottom of this peak. Great scene!
process: The front hill is good. The sky is too dark. The background hills too dull. All in all a small touch of more brightness?
color: the corners in the sky and the roofs has too much magenta. it would try to color balance it with more blue instead of yellow (tone) and more green instead of magenta (tint).
5: Morning light on Villa Belvedere and the valley behind
A6000 + E16-50 PZ
scenery: I'm jealous about the shot.
I would crop the lower right corner and allso some sky away. The villa will be at 2/3 on the diagonal from top left to lower right.
process: I like the process, but there has to be done something to get the villa more prominent. The crop is the first step, but maybe some vignetting?
colors: great! I would try a touch of more yellow (either through with balance (blue-yellow) or the yellows only), but may end at what you have now.
6: Sunset near San Quirico d'Orcia
A6000 + OM Zuiko 85/2
scenery: great moment for this scenery. The light makes waves out of the hills. The trees on the lower right corner a slightly too close to the bottom of the pic. The most prominent house is a little bit too much to the right. You may try to crop away the dark part on the very top (without cutting the clouds on the left!).
process: recover the shadows that you can see any detail in the trees at the bottom and the houses on the hill at the left side.
colors: it's very hard to get a good blue-yellow distribution in the golden hour. Your picture is a good example where it worked perfectly. The high saturation does even work with all the colors in the sky.
7: Morning light kissing the rolling hills
A6000 + OM Zuiko 85/2
scenery: great
process: great
colors: the sky has a touch of too much cyan and on the hill in the background the blue turns slight towards magenta. It's because of the warm look you tried over white balance (more yellow/magenta instead of blue/green). You may change that, with a color mask or selective color correction.
Best regards, Seb