Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Landscape & Nature Photography => Topic started by: bretedge on December 10, 2013, 04:36:49 am
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I made this image a few years ago in the days preceding a photography workshop I led in Grand Teton National Park. Only recently was I finally able to process it to my liking. I know it is an over-photographed location but I still rather enjoyed the dramatic light show and hints of autumn color in the aspens below.
Thank you for having a look.
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Lovely!
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Good image, not an easy light to control.
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Nice!
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Beautiful result!
Knowing that you struggled a bit with the post-processing side but, over time, managed to come up with this result is rather inspirational really.
I can attest to one or two images over the years that really frustrated me because I knew they had real potential but I could not do them justice in the post-processing.
I subsequently experienced a marvellous sense of satisfaction when I finally unlocked the post-processing keys that gave me what I wanted.
Well done.
Tony Jay
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Nice. A place I've always wanted to spend a little time. Only seen them from a long distance once.
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Beautiful result!
Knowing that you struggled a bit with the post-processing side but, over time, managed to come up with this result is rather inspirational really.
I can attest to one or two images over the years that really frustrated me because I knew they had real potential but I could not do them justice in the post-processing.
I subsequently experienced a marvellous sense of satisfaction when I finally unlocked the post-processing keys that gave me what I wanted.
Well done.
Tony Jay
Thank you, Tony. You're absolutely right about the satisfaction that comes with finally having the skills to process an image that's been languishing in the files for a while. That's why it is important to keep those files. I know photographers who are too OCD and they delete them if they can't get them right in the first go round. Big mistake!
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Did something change that enabled you to do that? Different software? New approach?
Yes, I finally learned an exposure blending technique that was easy enough to use but still very powerful and that gave me the results I've been wanting. I didn't get into nature photography because I enjoy spending endless hours at the computer. Until recently, the methods I'd used for exposure blending were far too time and labor intensive and as a result, I just didn't use them. Those days are long gone!
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Nice, classic shot!
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Well, if you feel like sharing... otoh if it's your new secret sauce, I completely understand ;-)
+1!
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Well, if you feel like sharing... otoh if it's your new secret sauce, I completely understand ;-)
No secret sauce at all! I wish I could say that I'm the Photoshop genius who developed this exposure blending technique but alas, I'm not. I just got good at following instruction. ;-)
I learned the techniques by watching video tutorials produced by two very talented photographers: Sean Bagshaw and Chip Phillips. Sean's tutorial, "Developing for Extended Dynamic Range (http://www.outdoorexposurephoto.com/video-tutorials/developing-for-extended-dynamic-range)" breaks the whole process down into easily learned little chunks. Chip's tutorial, "Image Editing, Volume One (http://www.chipphillipsphotography.com/Other/Videos/21945010_GhtPKD)", offers additional thoughts on not only exposure blending, but also integrating depth of field blends into your workflow. Really, both are just fantastic tutorials and are well worth the small investment.
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I guess that, after so many accolades above, you wouldn't mind a dissenting view: to me, the sky is over-processed, to the point that it looks like a cutout. It is darker relative to the foreground, while the opposite is expected perceptually. Pardon my bluntness.
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Nicely done.
Some can only document a scene while this interprets.
My only critique is that it would have been nicer as a wider view.
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I guess that, after so many accolades above, you wouldn't mind a dissenting view: to me, the sky is over-processed, to the point that it looks like a cutout. It is darker relative to the foreground, while the opposite is expected perceptually. Pardon my bluntness.
Yes. Lovely image, but my taste in skies is for more natural, softer, clouds. Every day I wince at my own past abuse of the clarity control in Lightroom. Repeat, lovely image, especially the mountains which do have a crepuscular veil.
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I guess that, after so many accolades above, you wouldn't mind a dissenting view: to me, the sky is over-processed, to the point that it looks like a cutout. It is darker relative to the foreground, while the opposite is expected perceptually. Pardon my bluntness.
I don't mind your dissenting opinion or bluntness at all, Slobodan. I disagree wholeheartedly, but we're in a civil forum and the right to disagree is one of the perks. ;-) This is exactly how I remember seeing the scene before me, which isn't odd considering the human eye is able to see a much wider dynamic range than the camera is able to record. Thank you for your honesty.
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To me eye the processing looks very "unnatural"...for one thing the gamma point...for a scene with that kind of backlight from the sun. Could you please post an original un processed image...RAW to JPEG (900 kb range)? I would be very interested to see what it was like before... /B
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This is exactly how I remember seeing the scene before me, which isn't odd considering the human eye is able to see a much wider dynamic range than the camera is able to record.
Mostly we "see" what we expect to see, and remember little ;-)
More to the point --
The majority of viewers of the horizontal image (http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/photographs/ansel-adams-aspens-northern-new-mexico-1958-5056459-details.aspx) think that it was a sunlit scene. When I explain that it represented diffused lighting from the sky and also reflected light from distant clouds, some rejoin, "Then why does it look the way it does?" Such questions remind me that many viewers expect a photograph to be the literal simulation of reality; of course, many others are capable of response to an image without concern for the physical realities of the subject. Either the photograph speaks to a viewer or it does not. I cannot demand that anyone receive from the image just what I saw and felt, the image will contain qualities that may provide a basis for imaginative response by the viewer.
page 64, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, Ansel Adams.
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Interesting, Isaac. This thread has me wondering about reality, remembrance and depiction. Three different things.
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Interesting, Isaac. This thread has me wondering about reality, remembrance and depiction. Three different things.
Very good point. I've never claimed to be a documentary photographer. I make photographs that will sell to the public at large while still remaining true to my own values, i.e. no hyper-saturated colors or over the top HDR style processing. As I said, I remember the scene looking very similar to the way it does in this image. Back in the day when I shot Velvia the foreground would have been nearly black. Perhaps that's what some purists expect in a backlit scene such as this one. I don't get caught up in gamma measurements and other techno-geek analysis. If an image looks good my eye and the public is willing to give me their hard earned money to hang a print on their wall, I consider it a successful image.
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Note, re. the comment about where/what the "gamma point" is...it's not really the point no? This technical(?) information...is simply a part of a query as to why your image looks so over-processed to my eye...and again unnatural. The thing that comes to mind is that it reminds me a bit of something like a CGI matte background landscape from a film.
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As I said, I remember the scene looking very similar to the way it does in this image. Back in the day when I shot Velvia the foreground would have been nearly black.
Yes, I think some people choose to show what they see, and others to present something closer to what film would capture. To each his own.
OTOH an ideal to strive for might be to show what is visible in a way that doesn't look too unnatural. In this category I put HDR shots that no one wonders about.
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I've never claimed to be a documentary photographer.
We know it's not documentary; the question is whether it achieves suspension of disbelief.
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This thread has me wondering about reality, remembrance and depiction.
Better change that to - subjective experience, remembrance and depiction - before someone drags us into a philosophical weedpatch :-)
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We know it's not documentary; the question is whether it achieves suspension of disbelief.
Isaac, I do not know if you invented the term or just quoting, but I like it tremendously! It seems to describe perfectly a starting point of the range I call 'believability.'
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Isaac, I do not know if you invented the term or just quoting, but I like it tremendously! It seems to describe perfectly a starting point of the range I call 'believability.'
He's quoting. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817 (yes, I had to look up the date).
Jeremy
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This thread has me wondering about reality, remembrance and depiction. Three different things.
"Time is a constant in the realm of photography but is not so in terms of our relationship to it. (http://books.google.com/books?id=U5kXTp-luIsC&pg=PA226&lpg=PA226&dq=%22Time+is+a+constant+in+the+realm+of+photography+but+is+not+so+in+terms+of+our+relationship+to+it.%22&source=bl&ots=nO4P7q6dTf&sig=Oee8kwfMDg8k0-WtO54yYnRPG80&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ndyxUtjFHObXyAG624GYBw&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Time%20is%20a%20constant%20in%20the%20realm%20of%20photography%20but%20is%20not%20so%20in%20terms%20of%20our%20relationship%20to%20it.%22&f=false) For instance, imagine a father, just home from work, tired and preoccupied, who goes to the park with his young daughter to push her on a swing. They stay for 20 minutes. For the father it may feel like and eternity; but for the daughter the time has flown by. They both experience the same amount of time passing.
Some years later, the memory of that timeline has reversed -- the daughter remembers that her father took her to the park to swing for hours; while the father, tired and preoccupied at the time, remembers it as only a few moments."
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Very Beautiful
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I guess that, after so many accolades above, you wouldn't mind a dissenting view: to me, the sky is over-processed, to the point that it looks like a cutout. It is darker relative to the foreground, while the opposite is expected perceptually. Pardon my bluntness.
I agree with Slobodan on this and with Isaac and the quote from Ansel. I find that despite it being a wonderful image, it feels a bit "heavy"; perhaps raising the mid-tones would help and increasing the mid-tone contrast would breathe more life into what is already a vibrant photograph. Seeing is believing, so I've attached an edit (which also has -30 Blue Saturation in HSL). I apologize if you feel in doing this I've over-stepped the bounds of the forum.
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Hi Terry, for me Brets original is closer to the light at sunset, treatment 'B' moves the eye from the mountains and rays to the lightened foreground more and the aspen gold tops lose some 'gold' and start to blend into the foreground, almost starts to take on a HDR ish look.
Just my humble opinion.
Brian.
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...almost starts to take on a HDR ish look.
Uuuuugggghhhhh - not my intention at all! I have nothing but disdain for the garish, "paint on black velvet" look of HDR. My apologies!
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Hi Terry, no need to apologize I wasn't suggesting that you would ever commit that sin.
Sometimes experimentation leads us to the doors of seduction and we must resist with all our might ;D
Brian.