I passed through Bryce Canyon about 10 days ago. I spent 4 nights in the area and found I really needed to become selective in what I pointed at. Wide angle shooting was mostly a waste of time for me, you couldn’t see the details for all of the details. There was no way to pick out a subject, - what the image was of or about.
The rest of my stay was using the long lens and picking out details. It was still chaotic but my last morning there I arrived at Sunrise Point at dawn and got this grouping of trees and radiating ridges. I shot through a lot of haze and had to crank on the de-haze slider which made things appear to glow.
I accentuated the color and glow in the trees and ended up toning the oranges down. I usually have a tendency to avoid heavy use of the saturation slider but am finding almost all color images need it since I use “camera faithful” setting on import. It was nice that the colors were complimentary. Nature doesn’t often give us that. Comments are appreciated.
Below is the RAW.
Specific Feedback Requested
Treatment, composition, any suggestions at all.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
ISO 400, 144 MM on 1.6 APS-C, f/8.0, 1//250
I could be way out in left field, but having been close to that same spot at the same time of the morning, I see too much saturation that might be present an hour later, but not so much when you took this and I am using your original as a guide. Then again, I wasn’t there on that day so there’s that, too.
I am going blind into a re-make. Blind, meaning with no visual reference to shoot for. No offense Chris. :^) No orange saturation allowed.
I should be able to re-post something Sunday or Monday at the latest.
What attracted me to the scene was the edge light (rim light) on the ridges, which would not be there in an hour. Also the backlit edges of the trees, so those are the tings I need to stand out. I am also having problems with the bushes in the far areas going dark and blue-green. I may have to go tp PS for that.
Hi Guy! I really love all the shapes in this image. I’ve never been before but I never imagined that there were so many trees! They really add interest to the mountain shapes and the shadows and light. I’m surprised you didn’t convert it to a black and white image. I personally think black and white would really look good. For me it would compliment what draws me anyway to the image.
My first reaction was that the image is over processed. I really like the composition and the idea you have behind this image. The colors are really strong as is appropriate for this subject but there are exaggerations which have become confusing. For example, on the left side there is a orange formation that is clear in the original but now has become an orange shape that I had difficulty identifying. Also, the light sand (bluish white) at the very top pulls you out of the image where it did not in the raw file. I might apply a crop up there to the processed version. But like I said - I really like the composition of criss crossed orange layers with the vertical greens scattered amongst them.
Since we all have different eyes, to be offended at a reply would be silly…I am not but it did make me rethink my approach and go back to images I shot at Bryce and see where I missed the tonality differences you are trying to re-create, basically from mind’s eye memory.
I left my edit information just so you can see where I went to get a decent separation between the greens, blues and reds. It still may not be in your wheelhouse for the color, but while I didn’t go as deep in the saturation as you first did, I did push the reds up a good bit.
Thanks to all @Chris_Calohan, @igor, @vanessa_hill, @Ryan_H h ryan,
This is the new verion, doing a complete makeover without saturating the orange. Slider clips are included.
As you can see I zeroed orange saturation and subtracted orange luminance. My goal was to maintain the edge lights on the ridges and the backlight glow on the trees. The whole feel of the image changes from bright, airy, and welcoming toward a darker, heavy, rugged look. Not that that is all bad. But to be honest, I remember coming up with a title for the image while looking through the viewfinder because the ridge fronts facing me were receiving light reflected back from the ridge backs in front of them. You can still see some of that working on the second major ridge from the bottom.
You will notice the crop I applied early on – I just wasn’t going to easily get rid of the discolorations in the white areas as Igor has also noticed. I tried some lightening of the shrubs to eliminate the dark holes they were creating, but it didn’t solve the discoloration problem. I did lighten the trees in the foreground. They were becoming black skeletons with green fringe.
For me the white area discoloration around the shrubs and my inability to remove it, is starting to put me off the image. This may be one of those I need to revisit in a few months.
The rework nails it, Guy. The backlighting on the trees and ridges is beautiful, and I like how the image is arranged so that the ridges all pull your attention down into the dense group of trees.
I might take a very thin crop off the left. There are a couple dark bits in the lower left that are a slight distraction to me.
