Self-Introduction

My name is Guy. I live in the Western US, and am originally from California. I am retired and live on the road. I do mostly landscape imagery. I am heavy Lightroom user while still learning some aspects of Photoshop. I have been photographing since 1970. I majored in commercial photography in college, then spent 18 years working in commercial labs making photo composites on 8x10 film. I hated it. I then got into IT, worked as a self employed geek for the balance of my working life.

I studied photo history and art history in and out of college, then got heavily into the history of the Americas from pre-conquest through the Pueblo Revolt. I am considering joining NPN to have access to discussions away from a social app environment where image life is measured in milli-seconds.

I prefer B&W imagery but also shoot color. I feel I might be able to add to discussions and critiques.

Grhen
The Shroud, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, AZ.

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Be most welcome @Guy_Manning.

Very good introduction, both in words and image. I find the texture to be just gorgeous, and love how you composed it.

Hope you enjoy this community and i can’t wait to “read” some of your knowledge and see your images.

Cheers.

Thank you for the warm welcome. I am glad you liked the image.

Hello Green, Very interesting introduction here, this shiny grey slab of rock is might impressive… I expect a dwarf to swing this door open, surfacing from his subterranean castle at any time … other than that, welcome :slight_smile:

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Hello Guy, welcome again to NPN. I hope you’ll find this place a much more supportive and friendly social setting…I dropped off social media this year because of just what you mentioned.

I really like the image you posted. Kind of reminds me of the Lord of the Rings where they were trying to enter the mines of Moria. :grinning:

I also like your treatment of the image. I’m curious if the film had that cool tone to it or if you adjusted it in post processing. Either way, it really suits the scene.

Looking forward to seeing and learning more from you.

Regards,
David

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Welcome, Guy!
I’ve been a member at NPN for a couple years now, and have found the discussions in all the Categories very interesting, thoughtful, and helpful. There is a lot of experience here, some incredible insights, yet newcomers to photography like myself (5 years) are made to feel welcome.
The silvery/light tones on the rock face wall are fabulous. They seem to glisten with mercury drippings, or maybe just water. Whatever it is, the silky-smooth look to them is just beautiful. And then that rock face is resting on the dark, jagged rocks at the base. Even these dark rocks have a nice “glow” to them. I love this image.

The tone goes back to my darkroom days where I used a modified 1:23 selenium toning to finish the prints. It increased the contrast in the finished print and created beautiful tonalities. I missed the effect on the digital images, so I experimented with the split toning function in LR and came up with this.

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Mark, if you see my response to David I discuss the affect of selenium toning in the old days. That “glow” would appear on toned Oriental Paper prints. I worked hard to make it happen in the rocky base of this image, but it is more a result of masking and forcing tonal separations in this case. For most of my B&W now I try to get the images to imitate the tonalities I went for back in the darkroom days. Or should I call it the dark-ages?

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Jjpg of raw file for reference. Due to questions I thought I should post the raw and give a few details.

I am fascinated by the forms and shapes of the shear walls occurring in the South-West geology. I see figures and faces everywhere and completely understand the Indians claiming there are spirits residing in these places.

This was taken at mid day. The shear face was mostly in shadow and the scene was flat. This fact was pointed out by a bystander who must have also been a photographer.

What came to my mind was a Native American, sex and tribe irrelevant, stepping out of the stone in a mourning shroud.

I used the brush tool to dodge and burn, and believe I also did some additional dodging and burning in Lumenzia/Photoshop to manipulate tonalities. Digital allows me to do the same things I wowuld attempt to do in the darkroom but with more precise control and range.

Hello and welcome to NPN. When I saw the thumbnail I immediately thought selenium toning, but more subtle than the preset in Lr (although I think that can be reduced or increased). I like your result. It makes the flat scene come alive which it wouldn’t be able to do if the light wasn’t so flat.

For the most part I don’t use presets, The LR preset is an ugly green if I remeber. I found my own combination. I also have one for slight gold tone.

Hi Guy welcome to NPN, I really love this image and have to agree with @Nikos and @David_Bostock it reminds me of Lord of the Rings too! Pretty cool what a difference black and white does for the image as opposed to your original color. Looking forward to more of your work and your comments and feedback as well!

Guy, welcome NPN. Your first posting is a great b&w image, the luminosity and contrast is great, and so is the subject and composition. I am a beginner hobby photographer (started 3 years ago), so I have no knowledge about the references made above to the film era, but I anyhow hope to know more about your handling of b&w images, settings in the field and the amazing post-processing you have shown here.

Ola

I was going to give you an idea of what my work flow was on this image. But, I found that my raw file has dissappeared and all I have are the tiff images in LR so I am missing the LR steps prior to PS. Being that it is a tiff tells me that I did some luminance masking to the image in PS, most likely to enhance the lighter values and to reduce darker values to gain local area contrast by dodging and burning directly to the masks. For instance, along the upper edge there are light streaks and dark streaks. I would have made appropriate masks for those values and lightened or darkened each accordingly separating the values byond what LR is capable of doing.

I opened the tiff in LR and the image had 5 curves masks, probably from one of the free luminance masking add-ons I was using in 2018 - I now use Lumenzia full version. Each of the masks are dodged and burned on the mask, something I don’t do now, but instead d&b on mask layers to preserve the original mask.

I apply color noise reduction up front and don’t use luminance noise reduction or sharpening sliders until after the tiff is generated in LR and any final touches in LR. I wish I could find a backup with the original, I would like to try the image again with the new LR tools. The version I used was what was current in early 2018.

iso 400, f8, 1/320th, 70-200 mm at 116mm.

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