Badlands Monochromes

[churly]

Two shots of badlands, the second pulled in tighter.
As always critique and ideas welcome.
Chuck

[wolfnowl]

These don't really work for me in B&W.  There's not enough variation, not enough texture because of the distance.  The colours in the badlands are often quite subtle, but I think these might work better in colour.

Mike.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I like the BW treatment OK, and it is hard to choose between them. If I were there, I would be very tempted to go for the closer shot. But of these two, I find the first one more satisfying, because it shows the sweep of the hills.

If you post the color versions, we can put the color-vs-black-and-white question to rest. (Though Jeremy will prefer a Colour version to a Color one anyway.    )

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I'd suggest to work on the toning.
There is unused potential left in the images.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Though its far from perfect I tried to to some editing on the image, just to give a rough idea of what is possible.

A very good help is also here in this article by George DeWolfe:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/bw_master_print.shtml

[churly]

Thanks for the honest opinions.  I agree they are indeed pretty flat.

Eric - Here are the color versions for comparison.  Being a dual US/Canadian I flip-flop between color/colour.  Journals tend to do the same depending on what continent they are based.  Embracing multiculturalism, Canadians generally just ask for consistency. 

Christoph - I tend to be conservative in my toning but your example shows that there is clearly room for more spice.  Thanks for the link.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Christoph's version is too contrasty for my taste, but moving a bit in that direction could help.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Ah! Now we have the colo(u)r shots!
I like them. To me, they look quite plausible and natural. Even in the color shots you could get away with a little more contrast (or Clarity) and perhaps a touch more saturation. But going to far with either would lose the sense of it's being a real place (of course, garish landscapes are popular these days, but not to me.)

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Christoph's version is too contrasty for my taste, but moving a bit in that direction could help.

Yeah - I didn't try to be subtle here, just wanted to make a point, since I believe the images are worth to spend the love.
Concerning the color versions - you might want to mix a b/w conversion into them in luminosity mode along with some dodging and burning.

[Lonnie Utah]

Though its far from perfect I tried to to some editing on the image, just to give a rough idea of what is possible.

I hope you got permission to do this before hand.

Personally, I don't know why people think they have the authority to modify the images of others (without permission). It's just not kosher. Ever.

And if you want my honest opinion, you made it worse, not better. Ever heard the old saying "Less is more?"   

[Lonnie Utah]

:which I took as an implicit permit to give answers in form of an image.

You're read the site TOC's, right??

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=76496.0

You also agree not to post any copyrighted material unless you own the copyright or you have written consent from the owner of the copyrighted material

People assume WAY too much around here....

[Jeremy Roussak]

I hope you got permission to do this before hand.

Personally, I don't know why people think they have the authority to modify the images of others (without permission). It's just not kosher. Ever.

Lonnie, you have your views on others fiddling with images you post here; others have different views. I, for example, have no objection at all to anyone "improving" a shot I have posted: getting such assistance is nearly always the reason I put the image up for viewing in the first place, and I've learned a lot from it. I suspect, from observation, that most of us here are closer to my point of view than to yours.

And before anyone gets too excited about it, it really doesn't seem to me to matter at all whether the image is posted in "User Critiques" or not.

Jeremy

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Personally, I don't know why people think they have the authority to modify the images of others (without permission)...

Maybe because the OP said: "critique and ideas welcome"?

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Since we have colour now ...
#1: Putting the coloured version in "Hard Light" Mode on top of the B/W edit I made
#2: Putting the coloured version on top of that in normal mode 60% opacity to make it believeablerer. This is actually my favourite now.

Chuck - did you realize you took an awesome image?

[churly]

Christoph - sorry for the slow reply.  The doings of life get in the way of fun things.  You have given me some ideas to ponder on.  Many thanks.
Chuck

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Anytime - I had fun doing this.

Cheers
~Chris

[Alan Klein]

Chris's #2 is my favorite.  The saturation, but not too much to make it unbelievable, adds interest.  The crop to focus in on only a couple of the rock forms eliminates the confusion of the original wide-open shot that loses your eye.  Less is more.

[KenS]

I'm planning a trip to the Badlands and came across this post.  My opinion, for what little it's worth 7 years later !, is that the original B/W at the top of this thread is the best of all the images posted. Everything else (higher contrast B/W and color w/o or with enhancement) is really overdone/over-the-top and somewhat 'disturbing'.
Whatever... at least when I get to the Badlands I'll have this comparison in mind as I shoot and will be more open to conversions to B/W in post-processing.  So, thanks for that.

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