The other night we were out scouting in Death Valley and ran into @HaliJ_Sowle a long time NPN member and @Michael_E_Gordon, always fun running into other members in the field! Death Valley has had quite a wet year and there was still some snow left over at high elevations after a recent storm. The light peaked through the storm clouds to paint the desert with this beautiful light.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
It took me a long time to decide on a crop for this one, I did a two row pano because I only had my 100-400 with me at the moment. I captured a lot more but ended up cropping out a fair amount.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Does the composition and color balance work?
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
26 image pano (13x2 in portrait) 100mm, f/8, iso 160, 1/30s stitched in Lightroom. Here is the original uncropped version for reference:
I think the composition works nicely in this image, the light on the hills is sublime and there’s lots of great detail and texture throughout the image. There are some attractive sweeping curves that lead the eye through the image that are effective.
If I had one minor dislike, I find that the blue tones in the snow are a bit too saturated for my tastes, but that’s a relatively subjective issue.
Cheers,
Mike
I like your first post with the blue and warm light David. I think the sky in the second image distracts from the warm light on the dunes. Composition and color works for me.
David,
What I particularly like about this post Is that you included the full pano file. I looked at other various crops for a while and (not surprisingly) could not find a better alternative. This is a great example of what NPN offers to members that helps all of us grow.
I like the warm/cool contrast you presented. The shadows here are just light enough to allow the viewer to wander thru the nice contours and explore the details of snow covered rocks.
Really enjoying this one!
Ah I see your conundrum about the crop, David. I think I would like to see more on top but at the same time I do not want to include skies in it. I think you have achieved a good balance. Same goes with the snow-free ground in the shadow on the LLC. Feels like it’s a little cut off but yet you run into issues on the hill on LRC. The color is amazing, no doubt about it! It is just incredibly pleasing with the blue/warm contrast.
David this is a tremendous graphic scene. The inferior sweep from left to right, near to far, cool to warm, especially the left side having more texture and slowing down my eye just a bit is very effective. I see what Adhika is saying about the desire for a bit more breathing room in the upper region, but this isn’t a deal breaker to my eye. I will say that the cyan cast is strong to my taste on my laptop - and for me somewhat overtakes in visual “power” of the warm on the right, especially since it takes up more surface area of the image. Still, this is a definite keeper for me and would do well as a large print, allowing for visual exploration.
I love the crop David, the soft light and transitions here are great. The cool thing about the nature photography community is that there’s an instant bond there. Michael Gordon is a great guy. We used to hang out when I lived in LA.
Wow, i love the contrast between cold shadows and warm lights on the peak. I see a lot of depth in the image, really inspiring for me. I will try to shot this kind of pano, i usually shot in a different way, more flat panoramic images. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks guys, after taking a break from looking at the file I also see the cyan cast, I toned it down in the rework (I put it in the original post) by using a selective color adjustment layer, selecting the blues and bringing down the cyans, much better!
Thanks Alan, glad you found that useful, maybe we can encourage more members to share before/after images to help others learn, I think that’s a great tool as well!
I tried using content-aware crop in the rework in the original post to give some more room up top, what do you think now?
Glad you found some inspiration, I don’t shoot panos this way myself very often either, but I’m inspired to do it more now as well!
David - The recropped version is impressive. A little goes a long way. I’m impressed with the job it did.
As for the color in the shadows, I thought there was still somewhat of a color cast, and to my eye, it was more magenta, but still not quite right to my eye. I took the liberty of downloading your image and doing a mask for the snow only and applied a Neutralize Color Cast to it. It might’ve gone too far for your vision/experience, but you get the idea.
David, the side lighting on that big V of a ridge is outstanding. The extra room up top is a nice addition to version 2, but I too see a magenta cast instead of the blue.
The rework is a very impressive image David, the CAF at the top was a subtle but important improvement. I too see a very slight magenta cast in the snow, I like what @Jim_McGovern did with his rework. What I really love about this image is the sinuous nature of the curves in the mountains, there is a nice sense of flow and rhythm in this image. I also like that we are seeing this scene from above, it adds such a sense of depth to this image. I would love see this image printed large, it would be nice to see it presented that way.
Thanks again guys! I find it very interesting that so many of you are seeing a magenta cast, I double checked it in Ps and if anything the snow is leaning towards cyan. I’m wondering if this is an optical illusion with the contrast of the warm light?
This raises an interesting question of how far we can trust our eyes, vs. using quantitative measurements. There is no question your rework still has a cyan cast (the data proves it), some folks may want that snow slightly cyan for creative effect, and some folks may prefer a more neutral a la Jim McGovern’s rework, that part is totally subjective preference.
One way I normally try to evaluate color cast is by running a TK actions Neutralize Color Cast 1 layer. I don’t always like what it does at 100% opacity, but it usually points towards the direction of a helpful adjustment. I picked a piece of white snow in your rework that had values of C45, M22, Y0, and after running TK NCC1, the same point had values of C44, M14, Y0. In this case I actually mostly liked what TK did globally (it looks similar to Jims rework), but I find it interesting that it affected magenta more than cyan (maybe that is the influence of the sunlit mountains on the TK adjust).
I guess if we did everything by empiric numbers though, it wouldn’t really be art would it
David, I have to admit that all of this is a bit over my head with the colors, but for me your image is a real beauty, and I think that is what counts. The light on the mountains. I like that you made it into a pano, and not including the sky. Very nice image.
I agree 100%, I almost always go by eye, but I found it to be an interesting observation I put in one more rework, hopefully the last! I took some magenta out of the blues and desaturated the blues a bit as well.
I put in one more rework, hopefully the last!