Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Landscape & Nature Photography => Topic started by: David Eckels on December 10, 2013, 06:27:46 pm
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Working on a number of images from a recent trek through Muir Woods National Monument. I will post 'em as I do 'em. Difficult penumbrous indirect lighting with some very hot highlights. Did a lot of bracketing, but trying to avoid an obvious HDR look. That is not to say I wouldn't fake a fill flash or reflector ;) This is the first I've been able to work on since shooting in early November.
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Looks reasonably good to me. Perhaps going just a bit easier on the vignetting, or slightly darkening the trees in the center?
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Realized I'd let my exposure and shadows drift down into that moody and darkish range I am so adept at achieving ;) Boosted those and overwrote the previous image. Thanks for pointing that out Slobodan. Vignetting however was intentional.
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The vignette seems unbalanced. A little darker on the left ?
Frank
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Very nice David. Looking forward to more!
Mike.
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Splendid. I would have used less vignetting but since it was intentional, then it's alright.
Good job.
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Works very well for me, really like this image. Plenty of mistery and texture.
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As it happens, other coastal redwood groves are more convenient to me than Muir Woods; and as it happens Muir Woods is a little disappointing in comparison to Big Basin (http://www.redwoodhikes.com/BigBasin/BigBasin.html) or Portola Redwoods (http://www.redwoodhikes.com/Portola/Portola.html).
I guess a trip to Humboldt and Jedediah Smith (http://www.redwoodhikes.com/) in the north of the state would really reset my expectations :-)
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Isaac, those are great places, too. I've wanted to shoot MW since I worked there as a kid.
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New one: Forest Grove.
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New one: Redwood Highlights
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In both of the last two, there seems to be a slight - well, maybe a little more than slight drift downhill to the right...I feel sort of like I need to kink my neck to look at it correctly.
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Were you using focus stacking?
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No focus stacking, Slobodan.
Chris, I did skew the photo to straighten the outside trees and will re-examine to see if I got it just right. There is a slight downward (to the right) slant to the original scene. Hmmmm...
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All good, Dave. The pastels in Forest Grove call to mind your recent aerial shot.
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Another...Fern Grotto
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Nice series. I'm particularly fond of the last one and would like to see more.
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I got concerned after viewing this series that my monitor was out of calibration so I did the prudent thing and recalibrated and it was dead on...so, I have to ask if anyone else is seeing just a hint of a "blue" cast to at least two of this series and the swirling watercourse posted yesterday. Of course foe me and I guess for you, I am having cataract surgery after the first of the year, so it well may be an occlusion from the membrane.
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Dave, I don't think any are really that strong (as opposed to that aerial you posted recently). Also, that one you posted titled "Forest Grove" has a rather odd/intense amount of blue-purples, red-purples, lavenders...coming through on my monitor. I don't know if that is what you're aiming for, but it's approaching "Kincaid" territory...and I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing. /B
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Chris, your right about the blue "cast" in that this was a weird shot with the light. The bay leaves are dark green, but they are shiny and reflect some of the blue from the sky. I didn't mess with the blue/aqua sliders, but did tone down G sat/lum and move the WB up to 5571 from the as shot 5K. This more accurately reflects my memory of the scene.
Brandt, O and Y bumped, but no R,P,M fiddling. I left WB at 5200 as shot. I'm not saying it was intended as a realistic rendering, but it reflects what I felt upon seeing and remembering. As for the series, I've wanted to shoot this park and try to explore some of the magic of the light and moodiness of the place. I don't know if it will be "successful" whatever that means (I don't have my eye on starting a string of gicle galleries ;) ). I also think I will be working with some of these some more and also returning for another visit or two or three. I haven't really put together a series from one place and so thought this would be a challenge. Thanks for the comments.
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Yes, there is a localized (not global) cast in #2 and #4, more on #2 than #4. I've noticed this before in this kind of lighting and am curious where it comes from. There has been quite a bit of discussion about the coolness of shadows and that could be the case here but I keep wondering about scattering or reflectance issues. Anyone have any thoughts.
Dave - I don't want to highjack your thread but the discussion has arisen here and your examples are apropos.
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Muir is such a fantastic place and one of may favorites in U.S. - did you walk the long loop trail?
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No focus stacking...
How did you get such back-to-front sharpness? What was the lens/f-stop combo?
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... I have to ask if anyone else is seeing just a hint of a "blue" cast...
Maybe I did, but didn't care. I assumed it was intentional, as it works rather well to create a particular atmosphere, the one with cool, spooky shadows.
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Slobodan, all were f/8 ISO200 at 24mm for Forest Grove and 105mm for Redwood Highlights. You know, "f/8 is great!" ;) Your point about the shadows is a great one because I have alway felt thing lurking just out of vision; it's a special place. BTW, no filters on the camera or in post.
Brandt, yes the loop trail and past it on up to the east.
Chuck, your point about the cast is interesting to me too so no apology necessary. I didn't try to manufacture the blue light special.
Chris, I will double check my monitor on calibration and let you know it's not your cataracts ;)
Thanks, guys. I have only a few more to share. Unfortunately, we only had about three hours in the park.
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Called by the Light
Update 12/14: I am struggling with this shot, so I re-did as you can see in the bottom image. The reds and greens were too saturated.
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Called by the Light
David - I think you had a good idea, but the postprocessing needs to be more accurate - its too obvious, especially at the top of the tree.
The image falls apart in an instant when this kind of local adjustment is not done totally accurate.
Cheers
~Chris
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Guardians
We used to be able to climb up and over on the log bridge and catch crawdads in the stream.
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Called by the Light
Update 12/14: I am struggling with this shot, so I re-did as you can see in the bottom image. The reds and greens were too saturated.
I see a magenta cast, especially in the fallen trunk.
Other than that, it is a fine image, reminiscent even of AA.
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Is that why there are none left? ;-)
Yeah, I know. When we were kids (~50 years ago) this area was "unprotected" way up beyond the loop trail. I'm glad to see it is fenced off now.
I see a magenta cast, especially in the fallen trunk.
Didn't see this until you pointed it out.
Other than that, it is a fine image, reminiscent even of AA.
Thank you Slobodan! His work captivated and inspired me from the very beginning. I am (almost) verclempt!
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Yet another. Thought I'd try a little B/W action. Used SEP2 for a little sepia tone then used a normal blend with 90% opacity and fill.
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I just realized I had missed some shots in the series.
You have dome some very nice work here and also some really nice postprocessing.
It good stuff, really!
If you want to push it further, my suggestion would be to play with localized sharpness/clarity.
This means first give the image a soft look by pulling down clarity/sharpness and reintroduce it later only locally at the really important subjects,
like the prominent tree trunks, important branches and such.
This is difficult, but with a little experimenting you can great effects of depth,
leading the eye through the chaos of the nature scene to the stuff that is important.
I have done this with shots of woods from a compact camera and it dramatically changed the appearance of the scene to the better.
Generally I think for many shots (not all of course) localized editing is the key to bring out the subject well - elevated above common.
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Last two, I think.
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In the first (Into the Light), seems to me you darkened the sky too much, so much so that the bushes illuminated by it are now much lighter than the source.
The second one is quite fine. I would, however, make the vignette a bit less obvious, by spreading it more toward the center (i.e., Midpoint in LR all the way to the left).