On my way home from Utah in April I followed US 50. The highway passes Great Basin National Park. You enter it on the east side of Mt Wheeler through Baker.
I found this composition with the town (village) of Baker nestled between the “roots” of Mt Wheeler to be quite compelling. To me it captures the feel for the area. It certainly didn’t hurt to have some clouds provide a mask to highlight the town.
Specific Feedback Requested
I am considering this composition for entry as a 19" wide print into the local Fall Fair.
I want the viewer to find the town so after doing the basic processing, I added radial filters around it to draw you in.
How well did I do?
What would you do to pump up the composition?
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Single exposure
Canon EOS R6, RF 24-105 F4 L USM - @ 105mm
30th Sec @f 11 ISO 100
Lightroom only - not taken to PS
A very nice vista and the village stands out well without looking artificially highlighted. There is a warm cast that is making the sky too cyan and the snow too yellow — I would look at WB. And I wonder about pulling out a bit more detail in the shadows.
The white balance is off slightly and taming down the cyan in the sky will help the comp. The snow is pretty close to white. Pulling more detail out of the shadows will help with achieving your goal. The cloud shadows are a neat feature of the image, but lightening them up a smidgen may help. …Jim
Diane - Jim - Thank you
So I have adjusted the white balance - snow is now White - this also changed the sky color
Next, I added a radial filter to the shadows above and below the village to open the shadows slightly while lowering the dodging I did over the village ever so slightly.
I’d lower saturation on the blues. You could also mask to allow the grassy area to be a bit warmer. The bluish cloud shadows at the base of the mountains are very tonally flat. The radial filter may not be the best thing to use there.
I’m not sure there is much more you can do to pump up the composition, I think it works fine as presented. You had bluebird skies, and make a good choice to minimize the sky. The town is in a spot where the shadows draw attention to it. So the composition looks good.
I think the colors have issues in both the original and in the rework. In the original the sky is too cyan, and the whites and highlights are a bit too warm. In the rework, the landscape is too cool for my taste especially in the shadows. I think I would try to aim for somewhere in between.
Hey @Ed_McGuirk - thanks for the comments -
Yes, bright sky but for a band of clouds caught well above the mountain. I thought they were nice but the bright snow on the peak points up and every time I looked at the print my eyes went to the clouds, not the village which is the point - hence the slim-jim landscape.
It was 7:30a in April at 5300 feet which is contributing to the color balance challenges (my excuse anyway ) I haven’t given up yet as I like the story.
After setting the best white balance, don’t hesitate to work on individual colors with HSL-Color in raw or Hue-Sat or Selective Color in PS. And even before that, look at the camera profiles in the raw converter. Some are much more suitable as a starting point than others. Do as much as you can in raw, but err on the side of caution as things can be pumped up in PS more easily than tamed.
) I haven’t given up yet as I like the story.