In January, I led an intensive travel course to Patagonia. We spent some time near El Chalten, Argentina in Los Glaciares NP, and dutifully made the pilgrimage to Laguna de los Tres to watch the sunrise on the Fitzroy massif. While the great peak Fitzroy never unveiled itself from its shroud of mist, the “lesser” granite towers to its side appeared just as the dawn’s single shaft of sunlight hit the otherwise unremarkable hunk of rock in the foreground. This scene will probably stay with me a very long time!
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
I’m really enamored with the blue/orange color contrast in the scene, as well as the sharpness of the sunlit peak against the soft, ethereal towers behind. I do wish I could have positioned the summit of the sunlit peak right between the two towers on the right, but this was a very fleeting moment and I had no chance to readjust the composition. Maybe a better photographer would have been able to previsualize the potential lighting and set up the composition accordingly, but I’m still too reactive rather than proactive in my compositions.
Technical Details
Sony A7R5 w/ Sony 100 - 400 mm f/4.5 lens. ISO 100; 118 mm, f/16 at 1/6 sec. Standard tonal adjustments and fine tuning in LrC, PS (TK8 tools) and Topaz DeNoise AI.
Jeff, this is nicely mysterious with the sunlit foreground peak and mostly hidden background peaks. The colors seem too strong, both in the blue and the red, but I wasn’t there. Your comp. works well.
Thank you, @Mark_Seaver. I actually haven’t done anything with the color other than using a bit of dehaze and adjusting the luminosity of the sunlight. In this case, the light really is that red; the sun is rising across 100+ miles of dusty Patagonian steppe when it hits this peak, which is a good mile above the surrounding landscape (Fitzroy in the mists rises nearly two miles from its base!). I will play around with the blues, however, and see if it works better with some desaturation applied.
Thanks again @Mark_Seaver and @Pieter_Opperman for your comments. I have posted a reworked version where I brought saturation in the reds and oranges down to -5, and reduced blue saturation to -10. I also was mistaken when I said there wasn’t additional color manipulation in the first version I posted; I had actually increased vibrance in LrC, so I reduced this quite a bit (but not completely) as well. Do you think this is an improvement?
Yes. The reworked version “feels” much more natural. I too am slowly learning that Vibrance choices matter. BTW if you post the revised version above your original, it becomes the one that shows in the thumb.
