Do you care for this or does it look “over-processed”?
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
I was escaping the crowds mid-morning in Death Valley and along Artists Drive I could see some “cracked mud” with a nearby place to park. I was drawn to the sediment channels and started shooting with my 24-70 what I thought was up close, experimenting with various compositions. It was not until I started editing my photos when I saw a composition within my original and proceeded to crop the heck out of the original and of course as I am doing this swearing at myself for not seeing this cropped composition while I was there and use my 100mm macro to get an uncropped version. I really like the veins of sediment, colors in the gravel/sand and the 3 bits of wood seemed to work well for my eye.
Once cropped I tortured the pixels with Topaz Studio’s Precision Contrast adjustment. The original image seemed blah and flat, the contrast adjustment gave it some pop and brilliance. Thanks for any comments or feedback as always!
Keith, I can see where you were kicking yourself for not whipping out the 100 mm macro lens after you got home. I love the veins of sediment too, and colors in the gravel and sand. To me it looks like it has been processed a bit too much, and seems like it was over sharpened or something, but I think it might have been the stretching the pixels. I hope you can get back there with your macro lens. That looks like that would be fun shooting.
Hi Keith, nice eye to recognize the potential in this scene. While the processing does give the image a slight unnatural look, I think it gives it the pop as you mentioned to move it from the “mundane” to the “interesting”. You could back off the processing some but I can see that strongly enhancing the colors/contrast is needed to make the image work IMO. This goes against my usual inclination to keep the image as natural as possible but I think it works and is necessary here.
Hi @Keith_Flood, amazing shot in my opinion. I really like composition. You found a nice spot. Did you try to process a little bit to dark? It’s only my opinion, this shot works well as it is. Thanks for sharing.
Keith: I like both versions and may actually have a slight preference for the original. Sharpening images with this much fine texture is a challenge but I think you did well. I also like how you composed this extraction from the RAW capture. Top notch shot. >=))> PS: I edited your title to reflect the repost. It’s always a good idea to do so so that others know you’ve reworked the image.
Thanks @Adhika_Lie ! When I was scanning for a composition I saw in the original frame, an animal stick figure and that is what I was going for, but was pleasantly surprised that on my computer I saw yet something I thought worked better with the cropped version.
