vestrahorn 2

[Jeremy Roussak]

Thoughts?

One thing annoys me (makes me annoyed with myself); I'm interested to see if anyone raises it.

Jeremy

[GrahamBy]

It feels a little weird: the grass on RHS foreground is razor sharp, as are the background mountains, but the mid-ground looks less sharp.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

To my colour-deficient eyes the green grass at the right jumps out at me, so I'd be interested in seeing a monochrome version.

But let me try to guess what annoys you. Maybe you were hoping for a nice clear blue sky without those threatening clouds? 

Eric

[Chairman Bill]

The dust spots? Easily fixed. Then the monochrome conversion & print it big, and hang it on your wall. It's a superb image.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Ah, yes: dust spots. I didn't even notice them until Bill mentioned them. Less than 30 seconds with the healing brush in PS should fix them (or two minutes with LR's spot remover.)
I agree with the rest of Bill's post also.

[Rajan Parrikar]

Beautiful image. Do you have a version with some more of the mountain?

[Jeremy Roussak]

Beautiful image. Do you have a version with some more of the mountain?

Something like this, Rajan? All I've done is blend the pano (6 shots), without any more processing.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Roussak]

The dust spots? Easily fixed. Then the monochrome conversion & print it big, and hang it on your wall. It's a superb image.

Thanks very much, Bill. I appreciate the comment!

Actually, it wasn't the dust spots, which as Eric observed were very easily fixed once I noticed them. What bothered me looking at the image was that the little mound in the foreground, towards the left, intrudes into the shoreline, interrupting the sweep of the black sea. Perhaps I should relax.

Jeremy

[Rajan Parrikar]

Jeremy,

I did notice that mound intersecting the shoreline. The infraction (if we can call it that) is very minor in this instance and takes nothing away from the image.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I must say I really like the pano. Since there are several similar small mounds, the one that breaks the shore line seems much less significant here.
Let us see a well-processed version of that (minus dust spots).

Of course, if you really don't like that small mound, you could remove it with an hour or so of work in Photoshop. Or, with a month of processing you could get rid of all of the little mounds in the pano, and even the mountain itself.   

[stamper]

No point in searching for perfection? Life isn't perfect and an image shouldn't be as well? I like the image and the processing so relaxing is advisable.

[philaitman]

dust spots aside (sublime processing btw, I would love to learn some of the techniques you've used on this, it has such depth and punch)

Th only rock with irks me is the one which is half out of frame, I would have 'removed' that one the other rocks I really don't have any issue with at all.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Thanks again.

Eric, I think it would be easier to go back to Iceland next February and re-take the shot, standing a foot or two further to the right! I will turn my attention to the pano, which is huge (by my standards, anyway: 25k x 8.6k pixels).

Phil, there was really nothing magic in the processing. Basic stuff in Lightroom, b&w conversion using Nik SFX pro, then take both as layers into PS and set the b&w to luminosity blend (now I know about that technique, I'm delighted with the results). The effect seems usually to be a bit strong, so decrease the opacity of the b&w layer to taste and brush bits of it away using a layer mask.

Then post here and get told about dust spots. 

If you look at the recent thread here in which I asked about blending, you'll see that there are other ways of getting a similar result, including plugins from Topaz which people who know what they're doing value highly.

Jeremy

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I've got some of the Topaz plugins, but I haven't really tried them much. I think I'll pull them out and see if I can produce some nice dust spots with them. 

[philaitman]

Thanks again.

Eric, I think it would be easier to go back to Iceland next February and re-take the shot, standing a foot or two further to the right! I will turn my attention to the pano, which is huge (by my standards, anyway: 25k x 8.6k pixels).

Phil, there was really nothing magic in the processing. Basic stuff in Lightroom, b&w conversion using Nik SFX pro, then take both as layers into PS and set the b&w to luminosity blend (now I know about that technique, I'm delighted with the results). The effect seems usually to be a bit strong, so decrease the opacity of the b&w layer to taste and brush bits of it away using a layer mask.

Then post here and get told about dust spots. 

If you look at the recent thread here in which I asked about blending, you'll see that there are other ways of getting a similar result, including plugins from Topaz which people who know what they're doing value highly.

Jeremy

Thank you Jeremy, There may be nothing magic in the processing but the results are absolutely magic.
I didn't know about the monochrome blending technique I'll do some research on that as the results look fantastic.

[muntanela]

I really like the picture. Regarding the annoying things, I noticed only the spots of dust and the zones of nearly blocked blacks on the mountain wall, especially that one under the cloud veiled summit pyramid. I thought it could be the natural color of Iceland volcanic mountains but it doesn't seem to be so (judging from Google images of Vestrahorn ).