some of the same shots from the other post, but since i prefer non-hdr work, here they are again in plain jane form.

 

Very Nice SB!!

 

I love pic 1 and 4!

 

I'm confused, are those even edited? They are pretty dull and flat but you did say plain-jane. Number 3 would be great with the levels and exposure corrected and the vibrancy bumped up. Throw an unsharp mask or high pass filter over it and you have a winner.

Here's an edit I just did:

There are no colors to work with saturation wise so I overlayed a black and white processed version with a slight blue tint over it. I ran a high pass filter for the grass, unsharp mask for the car. I tweaked the overall levels for a little more contrast then adjusted the red level to make everything a little more mellow and blue. It doesn't look very sharp when the forums shrink it down, and I probably could have done more sharpening but I didn't want any artifacts from the lowres jpg.

Editing really does make a world of a difference, let me know if you need any help!

 

I don't know Thomas W, but your effort looks like a B&W with a blue cast, no snap.

 

I adjusted the level to shift more towards some blue tones. The grass was far from vibrant so there was not much I could do to help it. Can't bring out anymore sharpness or definition without jpeg artifacts from hell. Low resolution jpgs are never a good starting point.

 

What's up with the blue cast? Was that done on purpose or is the white balance off?

There's also some ghosting around the trees?

 

I did it to compensate for the lack of color and gloomy sky, it also seemed better than black and white. I don't know what else to do to an almost desaturated photo.

The ghosting is not from processing, thats from the original. I believe the spots without color are from the blown out highlights but the blue areas had a better exposure.