An image of Calf Creek Falls in Utah from last week. I was lucky and had this place to myself, I took a number of images but this one did the best job of conveying the place. It’s a quite large area, in the red rock country, it was a gray lazy day. Surprisingly the thing I noticed mostly were the trees on the right of the image, and that’s how this came to be. It’s a 2.5-3 mile hike back here so this was shot with my Sony a6300 and Sony’s 10-18 wide angle lens. Shot at f16, 4 second exposure, at 18mm, likely had a 3 stop ND filter and polarizer on.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
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What strikes me is how the smooth waterfalls mimic the smooth streaks in the rust-colored rock walls. That is kind of cool. Congrats on a nice long hike and finding solitude!
Jeff, this is a nice image of Calf Creek Falls. I do like the composition as presented. The trees on the right, and the cliff line shifting up in the upper right corner, both serve to create some balance against the falls. I also think you included an appropriate amount of that upper cliff, and am not bothered by the falls being cut off, I think it works.
White Balance and colors tend to very subjective and a matter of personal taste. I certainly think it works as presented. My own personal taste leans more to cooler WB, and it might be worth experimenting with that look as well. I’m not implying cooler is better, but think a cooler WB creates a different set of color contrasts. Here is an example of what I mean.
Thanks Ed, I always appreciate your ideas! I will be looking at some images later today and will try that. Though looking at white balance is one of the first things I do when processing. My mentor always called color temp and the exposure sliders, mood sliders and I took that to heart. Thanks.
I had assumed you could just delete the older image and put in a new one but didn’t see how. I am curious about what Ed did and will ask. There was some green in the scene, especially around the falls itself.
Jeff, your original posted image looked too yellow to my eye. This is especially noticeable in the white water, neutral colors like white are good at revealing color casts. My adjustment was to use the TK Actions Neutralize Colors 1 tool,which adds a layer automatically adjusting color, and then I played with the opacity to taste.
If you don’t use TK, then a very similar thing can be accomplished by adding the opposite color of yellow, ie blue, via a Photoshop color balance adjustment layer. In either case, the image becomes cooler and the white water is more neutral looking. In my rework this cooling/adding blue makes the water at the base of the falls less yellow looking, and to my eye slightly greener. Yellow water plus blue = slightly greener water.
Thanks Ed, That’s good information and notion of how to look at it that I didn’t think of. I think your eye is better than mine, I don’t really see the yellow in the white water on my screen but will pay closer attention. Thanks.
There is an objective, quantitative way to direction ally assess color casts, without using subjective eyeballs. Use the color picker in Photoshop to click on a neutral color like white, and then look at the RGB values of the neutral color.
Results of sampling both images in the same spot on the white water "
Original - R 246 - G 251 - B 245
Rework - R240 - G 247 - B 247
A pure white would be 256/256/256. These numbers show the rework with a more neutral white (cooler than the original), since the 3 numbers are closer in value (G&B the same actually). The change adds blue, reduces red and green, and thus the rework is a slightly cooler image.
Jeff, on a much simpler level, what drew my eyes in first was how soft the water fall is in comparison to the great detail and color in the rock formations. For me, it’s just a lovely photo to look at, nice capture.
Linda, Thanks, I’m mostly with you. I don’t spend lots of time processing, this was 5 minutes at most. This is mostly for myself but I do enjoy learning so I pick up and apply what I can grasp.
Cool, I’m mostly a Lightroom guy though am teaching myself photoshop, as every once in awhile there is more I’d like to do than Lightroom allows. I will start checking this as I usually just wing it and go to where I like what I see with white balance.
