I don't know how much effort you want to put into individual images, I know often I just want a "I was there" and not try to make an art quality print from everything, but I was looking at this one and trying to figure out how to make it pop.

You're only using a small portion of the dynamic range on the image, so I grabbed it down and played with it a bit, and I'm thinking that carrying a graduated neutral density filter, maybe as much as two stops, would kick the heck out of images like this. And in a twist, I'd put the graduation line about down by that stone channell, and the dark edge down. That would let you lighten the image overall so that this side of the wine barrel isn't this huge attention suck while still keeping that sense of shadow and weather.

And for the purists out there, a Grad ND or simulation thereof is is a mundane enough filter that everyone uses one without apology.

Like the image, just think it needs something ot be a little stronger.

Thanks, Dan. I am also not quite happy with this picture--but thought it was interesting enough to post. I agree with you about the range and the attention suck, and I'm also not thrilled with the composition. I wish there was space between the barrels, for one thing (that is, that I'd taken a couple of steps to my right).

I must confess that I don't quite follow your suggestions -- are you doing this in photoshop? gimp? So far I've done only very minimal adjustments -- I'm not a purist; it's more that I'm a PS neophyte. :)

I did it in GIMP. Pulled up the image, created a new layer, changed the opacity of the new layer to about 20% (experiment), then just tried laying down different white to black gradients to see if I could make it snap a little bit more.

Looking at it now I think I also had some gamma issues the last time I looked at this. I'm also wondering (and now we're getting way into the theoretical) whether a vertical composition that cut a little closer to the barrels would be stronger, but now I'm also starting to get into the "I wonder what lenses she has" territory...

Ahh. That makes sense to me and I can replicate that in Photoshop. Hmm... may have to experiment with this type of gradient now and then!

As for lenses, I only have one: a Canon 28-135mm image-stabilized EF lens. It suits my purposes for now and I'm not sophisticated enough to put other lenses to good uses, yet...

From what I've heard about the 28-135 that makes a great general purpose lens. I have the 28-105 (non-IS) that sees a lot of use when I'm carrying an SLR as a knockabout camera, and I'm told that yours has all the optical properties of mine (fantastic for a consumer grade zoom) with the IS. If you start looking to spend bucks on lenses, I found that my 17-35L/2.8 is my most used lens, and there's an updated version that's sharper and goes to 16. Of course this gets multiplied out by the digital to a fairly mundane range, but with the digital back I carry that and something long and am generally quite happy.

Although the one thing I'm thinking would be cool with the digital back would be one of Canon's tilt/shift lenses... Must get some business issues resolved before I can drop that much on toys, though.

One of the reasons to do this sort of gradient with a filter is that often you're using it to reduce the contrast in the scene to the point where the film or CCD can sense it. If you're capturing raw images it probably matters less, but in scenes with deep shadow and bright sunlight you can use a graduated filter to grab details in both places even with the limited dynamic range of JPEGs or slide film. And, with graduated colored filters do white balance between regions, but many scenes like that don't lend themselves to adjustments along a straight line (ie: moonlight and incandescent house lights), and carrying a lot of colored filters runs up the price of a camera bag fast.