Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Landscape & Nature Photography => Topic started by: shadowblade on November 30, 2014, 07:46:18 pm
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Sunset over the Gokyo Lakes from the summit of Gokyo Ri, with Thamserku rising in the background. Snowfalls in the Cho La and other passes are visible in the distance.
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Good Morning,
This is a very chalenging scene because of the very high dynamic.
I suspect some clouds and some snow fields are clipped.
Do you use Lightroom, C1, or DXO?
I think Lightroom and the new C1 allows you to recover more highlights.
This photo worth the pain ;)
Have Nice Day.
Thierry
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Fantastic photo.
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Spectacular and almost too vibrant but colors at high elevation can be unreal. Framing is very well executed and the village gives a sense of the scale: huge!
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Good Morning,
This is a very chalenging scene because of the very high dynamic.
I suspect some clouds and some snow fields are clipped.
Do you use Lightroom, C1, or DXO?
I think Lightroom and the new C1 allows you to recover more highlights.
This photo worth the pain ;)
Have Nice Day.
Thierry
I'm using Sony's Image Data Converter for RAW conversion. It's clunky software, but it's not like landscape photography requires a huge number of files to be adjusted and converted.
There's no actual clipping in the highlights - it comes very close, but not quite.
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Spectacular and almost too vibrant but colors at high elevation can be unreal. Framing is very well executed and the village gives a sense of the scale: huge!
I was worried about the amount of saturation there - it prints well, but, viewing it on a calibrated wide-gamut monitor, it can be hard to tell exactly what it will look like on a typical laptop or desktop display. The lakes are very, very blue, though!
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Colors can be strong there, but not that saturated… Lake looks almost believable, clouds in the horizon not as much so. Usually the sky is deeper blue than anywhere in the world, but here the clouds masks and dilutes the deep almost half-space blues.
Hitting the saturation slider bit too hard seems to be the trend nowadays. Like now it is natural, naah, bit more, looks good, yeah slightly more, they have not been there… ( But I have…)
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Colors can be strong there, but not that saturated… Lake looks almost believable, clouds in the horizon not as much so. Usually the sky is deeper blue than anywhere in the world, but here the clouds masks and dilutes the deep almost half-space blues.
Hitting the saturation slider bit too hard seems to be the trend nowadays. Like now it is natural, naah, bit more, looks good, yeah slightly more, they have not been there… ( But I have…)
What's wrong with the clouds? They look like normal sunset clouds shot with a warm white balance.
Minimal blue sky that day - too much dust/haze in the air.
I was much more worried about the blueness of the lakes.
Maybe it's something to do with being an ex-Velvia/Cibachrome user...
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What's wrong with the clouds? They look like normal sunset clouds shot with a warm white balance... I was much more worried about the blueness of the lakes...
I do not think anyone would have any issue with the lake, as we've seen similar lake colors in Canada, Iceland, etc. It is the clouds. The yellow part is highly unbelievable. One does not normally use a warm WB for sunsets, they are intended, as their name suggests, for Cloudy or (deep) Shade situations. Although, now that I mentioned it, I can see how "Cloudy" WB might be misinterpreted to mean "meant for clouds."
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I do not think anyone would have any issue with the lake, as we've seen similar lake colors in Canada, Iceland, etc. It is the clouds. The yellow part is highly unbelievable.
What colour would they be then? They're the same colour as the mountain tops, which are also (obviously) white, but illuminated by the setting sun.
Not sure which part of the world you're from and what sunsets look like there, but, here in Australia (and in many other places I've been) clouds on the opposite side to the sun turn yellow, then orange, then finally red as the sun goes down. Normally they change colour a lot later than objects on the ground, since they're usually higher up, but here, the clouds are no higher than the tops of the mountains.
One does not normally use a warm WB for sunsets, they are intended, as their name suggests, for Cloudy or (deep) Shade situations. Although, now that I mentioned it, I can see how "Cloudy" WB might be misinterpreted to mean "meant for clouds."
I use both warm and cool WB for sunset (sometimes even split WB), depending on what sort of effect I'm trying to achieve. Warm WB is great if I really want to emphasise the orange/yellow tones, rather than tone them down.
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To be fair practically all landscape shots shown on this site (also in the tutorial type articles, and there even more…) are over contrasty* and over saturated, so this photo is not an exception. For some reason few of us started to pick on you. If you really want to convince us it really really looked that way, how about giving us a raw converter print screen with all sliders at the neutral position?
Just kidding...
*) meaning mostly local contrast = clarity slider in LR.
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To be fair practically all landscape shots shown on this site (also in the tutorial type articles, and there even more…) are over contrasty* and over saturated, so this photo is not an exception. For some reason few of us started to pick on you. If you really want to convince us it really really looked that way, how about giving us a raw converter print screen with all sliders at the neutral position?
Just kidding...
*) meaning mostly local contrast = clarity slider in LR.
Sure.
This is just one of several files that made up the final image, since it required both stitching and exposure blending. It's the left side of the final image, plus a bit more further to the left that was cropped out of the final image, but you can see the yellow/orange glow in the clouds.
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Wonderful shot. Good work on the cloud and snow colour, even if it is unusual and unexpected. I saw this nearly-brown light on snow-covered mountains just a week ago and immediately thought "No one would believe it".
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Fair enough, that IS the way your camera interpreted the colors.
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Why can't people just enjoy a great shot? White stuff reflects whatever colours are hitting on it, at sunrise and sunset, white clouds are not white...
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A wonderful image, even though the monitor I am watching this on (at work) is of such abominable quality it can't keep up with the rich colours the image still shines. The size and scale of the place are just plain astonishing.
Remember these sort of strong yellow/orange/brown hues on sunsets here in the Netherlands as well, allthough in that case the colours were apparently caused by loads and loads of volcanic dust in the atmosphere acting as a filter. I like the occasional image with strong colours, given the scene somehow 'requires' it, like this one.
Thanks for showing, Regards, Sander
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Why can't people just enjoy a great shot? White stuff reflects whatever colours are hitting on it, at sunrise and sunset, white clouds are not white...
Because it's more interesting to get a critique. Having been on Gokyo Peak (at dawn tho), my reaction too was "clipped, contrasty, too vibrant", but the OP's answers and file make a good case.
In general if I post an image here, I'm not looking to get my ego stroked - at least not only.
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Because it's more interesting to get a critique. Having been on Gokyo Peak (at dawn tho), my reaction too was "clipped, contrasty, too vibrant", but the OP's answers and file make a good case.
In general if I post an image here, I'm not looking to get my ego stroked - at least not only.
Dawn is quite different. There, the light is coming from the other side of the visible peaks, so you'd get a silhouette rather than illuminated peaks. Also, at sunrise, there is far less dust in the air to scatter the incoming light, and the sky tends to be much bluer as a result. That's why I went up in the evening instead of the morning - you get better light, although you also run the risk of getting no shot at all due to incoming clouds.
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Because it's more interesting to get a critique. Having been on Gokyo Peak (at dawn tho), my reaction too was "clipped, contrasty, too vibrant", but the OP's answers and file make a good case.
In general if I post an image here, I'm not looking to get my ego stroked - at least not only.
Well, as you can read, the OP has (again) explained the reason for the colours. I am not against critique, of course, but it needs to be reasonable.
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I was originally thinking that much of the concern over saturation and contrast could be attributed to the differences between wide-gamut environment OP is working in (display and print) and our own sRGB displays. Having seen the original, however, I am more inclined to think that the post-processing isn't dong justice to the scene and the original file. There is a fine line between emphasizing and exaggerating. When the nature gives you an apple, do not make a lemonade.
Marked areas, from left to right:
1. If you look at the forest in the lower left corner of the original file, you'd be able to see it is green, though in shade, and warmed by the setting sun. Look at the PP file and you'd think it's a forest fire, it is so red.
2. The snow in the shadow, indicated by the arrow, has a very believable muted color, present in other areas of the image as well, and the transition to the patch of light just underneath it is gradual. In the PP file, the color turns into an almost grotesque pink-ish, with a sharp transition, and you can't find a similar color around (int other words, it looks out-of-place).
3. There is practically no yellow color in the original, rather various shades of orange. Look at the encircled area in the PP file and the very saturated yellow suddenly appears.
4. The most pronounced difference in contrast can be seen in the top cloud, which becomes almost white. In other words, while the original has gentle transitions between various hues and shades of orange, the PP one goes into a stark contrast of yellow and white.
Then again, there are obviously enough fans of turning it up to the n-th degree, so who am I to disagree?
EDIT: Just to clarify, the left image is the OP's original image
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..who am I to disagree?
The left, unedited, crop has far more in it.
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it would be iteresting to see the RGB histogram - if the red channel is saturated and slighly blown that would also enhance the yellow. It would also explain why increasing global brightness by not very much has given a much yellowwe output in the sky.
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I'd keep working on this until you get it. I think it can be done, and it will just take a substantial amount of time tweaking, and re tweaking until you're completely satisfied. As it stands the image looks good, but it could be excellent with some additional work. I feel the main part that draws away from the image for me is the loss of detail in the highlighted sections of the picture. As many have stated, extremely hard with the range of exposures, but you're lucky to have many exposures to work with it appears.
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Wow very nice.