Mu43 Post Processing Challenge #128

Welcome to Challenge No.128 and 'Best of Luck' to all those who choose to enter.

I hope the photo selected for this challenge will encourage members to enter. The shot was taken several years ago at Prasat Phanom Rung Historical Park, Central Thailand. Phanom Rung is one of Thailand's most amazing Khmer architectural sites and is definitely worth visiting if you have time to travel 4 hours east of Bangkok. It is aged over a thousand years old and reportedly built on an extinct volcano. It was originally a Hindu religious site and later became a Buddhist one. Several additions were made during the 15th-18th Buddhist century.

Camera used was the EPM1 with the Olympus 17mm F/2.8 lens: - ISO 200 / F:5.6 / 1/800. Even though this photo was taken with the 12MP sensor, I believe it has enough processing room to pull in the highlights and boost what is required. I hope this image brings out some great color and monochrome results.



The Rules:

The Challenger will provide any photo that he/she deems worthy of challenging other members to "improve" by way Post Processing. It must be their own photo, and taken with m4/3 equipment. "Improve" is a subjective term, and includes many creative ideas as well as traditional "fixing". The Challenger agrees that entrants may make any changes they deem fit to post in their entry.

The winner of the previous challenge gets to post the next Challenge and serves as the judge for his/her PP challenge.
For obvious purposes, the judge is disqualified from participating in his/her own PP challenge. Instead, he/she should post a photo to start out the challenge.

***** If the winner fails to post a new challenge within five days, the responsibility passes to the runner-up. *****
At the end of the 72-hours (we don't have to be strict about 72-hours, especially with time differences depending on where you are on the globe), the judge will name a winner, a first runner-up, and a second runner-up.

Entrants:

The Challenger's image is posted for the sole purpose of the PP Challenge; it is not posted to invite Critique or Criticism.
Entries shall be limited to 2 per member for each Challenge.

Entrants to post a BBCode link to the Large size image of their PP edit(s), preferably 1024px x npx, or npx x 1024px, if the original image and/or the PP edit allow for these sizes. Also a click-through to the original sized hosted edit if appropriate (but not a requirement for entry). If you post your entry to a photo-hosting site such as Flickr, Photobucket, or a Gallery, etc., please credit the original photographer to make it clear it is not your photograph; something like "Photo taken by xxxxxx over at Mu-43.com" should suffice.

Entrants are strongly encouraged to post the settings and techniques used for their entry, however this is not a requirement for entry.

As we all know, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. We may not all agree with the chosen winners, but the judges decision is final without adverse comment from the Entrants; the judge is encouraged (but not required) to state what criteria he used to decide on a winner.

To make sure we don't break any Mu-43 rules/regulations, by participating in the PP Challenge you are allowing the judge to re-post your image for the sole purpose of announcing the winners in the thread.

Please use the links below, to access the full sized ORF and JPG files.

ORF File @ http://1drv.ms/1sXauiZ

JPG File @ http://1drv.ms/1sXazmT

Contest will end 23 Oct 14 at approximately 6pm Bangkok time.

 

Great results so far in this challenge. Computers slowing down   I know all about that one. i type this on a Macbook air because my old PC desktop is struggling to process basic changes in MS Word. 7.5 years and its time for this old Acer to be retired.

 

I must have looked at all these photos 10-15 times and missed those little guys you inserted, every time. Leave something on the ground or in a car and they will steal it in a second. Their brethren have even stolen my golf ball off the 12th at a mountain course several times.

 

Thank you to all the entrants in this PP challenge. The image selected was one of 4 that I pondered over for an hour, ensuring that enough could be done with both aspect changes and colour alterations. Although the image was rather tight on the original crop of the main subject, I believed it still left enough room for further tweaking. There were some really great entries and it has been a difficult task to select only one image. Both colour and monochrome versions of this image look great in their own right.

1st place - Brian Beezley with his image in #2. This result is more of a natural representation of the image which I believe does the location (image) the most justice. The crop works with the image and brings the main subject to the centre with the entry to the main building coming in from the right hand side. Congratulations to Brian for his entry.

2nd place - esnift, with his image in #7. The tones in this image are full and could easily represent this location when a storm was about to strike in the late afternoon. The tones have been brought out without over processing the image and leaving a haze around the sharper corners. This also applies to the sky and clouds. One could have easily taken the contrast and tonal exaggeration of the clouds too far, but not in this case.

I would also like to mention 2 other contributor's efforts; AussiePhil and dbuckle. Phil has again shown how much can be extracted from older sensors with good techniques in PP software. I thought there was enough headroom in the original file to create something good, but Phil displayed how much information there was in the RAW file and how it could be used. The first 10-15 times I looked at dbuckle's images, I missed the additions of some Thai monkeys (Lings in Thai language). These thieving little guys are everywhere in most temples throughout Thailand. I did not see any in this temple but the surrounding jungle was full of them. On a side-note, I recently watched a local Thai male trying to get 3 monkeys off the roof of his car. They were not impressed about moving and in the end, the man tried to slap the largest monkey with his open hand to remove him. The response was that the monkey slapped him back over and over.

Congratulations to all entrants and especially to Brian Beezley for his winning entry.