Original:
More Yellowish:
How to capture my impressions of these Utah canyons? That was my thought as I experienced them visually. This was my second trip to the area. During my first trip I tried a more distant approach with cottonwoods or rocks as foreground in front of the walls. Or compositions of wall and sky above. But I felt that was largely a failure. So this year I decided to concentrate on the walls themselves. The essence of the place I decided was the bounce light that illuminates one wall from the opposite wall. That’s how this image was made. This light was essential as you can’t reproduce it by shooting an image in the shade and then reprocess it in photoshop to look the same as that light.
So what do you think? I’m uncertain about the saturation of this image. Is it too much? Last night I felt I went overboard but this morning with a different ambient light it feels about right.
GFX50R, 32-64, f/11
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Hi Igor,
I love the reflected light in Utah canyons. You can shoot all day long. I like this composition very much. Your recent work has brought me back to the basic of photography–line, shape, texture, color. I’m learning/relearning from your posts, so thank you for that.
This image has depth to it, and a feeling of immense size although I bet it’s a fairly small scene. I think this has much more impact and artistic feel than a shot of wall and sky or anything wider. On the saturation, it might seem a bit hot, but I’m not sure…
Thanks for posting this one. I look forward to reading the other comments.
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From my perspective, Igor, I was drawn to the color, shapes and lines as @David_Bostock mentioned. I’ve not been to the Utah canyons so no base for the depth or size of them. Just from the image they feel as though they are immense. As for the saturation, again from my first impression, it is just a but too much, but here again, as you’ve said, I think the lighting would effect this particular image a lot. I wonder if bring up the shadows, just a tiny bit might help? Just a thought.
I really like the framing/composition on this one, Igor. This is not something I would think of when envisioning the walls of Zion and southern Utah. The light that is created from reflected light bouncing off opposing walls can be incredible and I think this image shows that but I think it goes just a little bit too far on the saturation. Or, it could be the super high contrast from the bright white frame that is too much. Maybe an off white heading towards gray?? This is a tough call though. It really depends on how you want to show this image off. At any rate, wonderful composition with incredible light and really good lines and geometry.
This image really shine when it’s viewed large and one can see all the small details. I really like this and good on you for seeing this in the first place!
I can’t comment on the saturation because I’m on my work computer and my monitor is very colour inaccurate. I should have looked on my main monitor at home last night but I didn’t have time. Sorry.
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Igor,I don’t know any canyons or walls . I see a piece of abstract art. Photography made by you in your view as the photo artist .And I love it !
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It’s funny. I’m now seeing this in a fully lit room during the daytime when before I was seeing this at night in my relatively dark office and now, I feel it’s much better. It’s still very saturated but it doesn’t matter if the color is accurate. I think it depends largely on how you want this image to be perceived. As a piece of art which is now where I think this is going or a color accurate image simply documenting what you witnessed. This is impeccably composed and works really well as a piece of art.
Igor,
My first response, question was: “Where’s the cliff dwellings? Maybe if I go to the larger view?” 
Seriously though, I’m sure we’ve all seen some of those with this reflected glow.
I’ve not been in person to any canyon with reflected light. The closest I’ve come is learning how to use reflected light off perhaps the world’s biggest reflector, El Capitan. But that doesn’t come close to the canyons and red sandstone.
Kudos for isolating only the details of this wall. Scale is out the window so that makes for an intriguing if not mysterious image.
Again, can’t speak to the color or saturation. The uniformity of the color/sat however makes me wonder about gamut? Of course it’s not pure red, and I’m confident you were keenly aware of that in processing. I guess I’m having a hard time with the edge to edge uniformity in color/sat. But of course I wasn’t there and have no reference.
I think extracting the composition, details and texture from the larger wall is the impressive part for me.
Lon
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Here is the jpeg file produced by the camera without any processing.
As you can see it’s really close to the processed work. The constancy of color I think is due to the constancy of the rock itself. The sedimentary rock in this canyon breaks off in uniform flakes leaving behind a very smooth even surface. This is my interpretation of events. I don’t think this smoothness is caused by water erosion. This particular is below an overhang of a cliff face rather than the face itself. Water does not run across it’s surface but rather flow off the overhang to the broken fragments below. These areas are not uncommon in these canyons and have the most intense colors. Most people don’t see them because of the trees and vegetation that block their view.
My monitor and camera pretty much showed the colors as I remember them. However, my printer is not rendering the colors correctly. Instead of an orangish red I’m getting a pinkish red. That, I’m suspecting is because my printer (Epson P800) is incapable of rendering the true colors. I’ve printed it in Relative Colorimatric mode but have not tried Perceptual mode which might make a difference. Yesterday one of the cartridges ran dry so that stopped everything for now. But I’m starting to question the limitations of this printer because it often has trouble with the warm hues. Others, especially the greens, come out wonderful.
You may be referring to this sort of thing. This is a snippet of the lrc at 100%. You can see an area which is appears to be flat in coloration.
I thought you had a point in started to search the literature. However, if I blow this up to 300% you get this (I had to do a screen dump of what photoshop displayed). Hit the + sign at bottom left to see the 300%.
The you see that it’s not flat at all but has texture and color variation within it. So imagine something as fine as white chalk being photographed. It would naturally have little color or tonal variation by the nature of the material. This stuff must be as fine as sand dust. Unlike the sandstone on the California coast where the individual crystals sparkle and give a mosaic like impression this has nothing like that.
Well, that was a rabbit hole that was worth going down as I got to know the feel of the material I photographed.
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Thanks Igor. I meant to ask/question about the rock itself. Given you isolated a small section of the wall, the more likely it would have uniform color.
Thanks for the explanation.
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@Lon_Overacker, @Tom_Nevesely, @David_Haynes, @David_Bostock, @linda_mellor, @Ben_van_der_Sande
Thank you for your comments. I have printed the image fully now and am pretty happy with the colors as they are shown above. They may seem too rich but that’s how they were and it’s also why I shot the photograph. Well, the truth is that it’s been 3 weeks now and I can’t recollect exactly how the color was.
My printer doesn’t handle yellow very faithfully so the print really couldn’t match the image accurately.
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I added a more yellowish version which seems to glow more. Wonder what you think.
I’m not even sure why but I prefer the yellower version.
I like the original best, Igor. I also think those really close up versions look neat with all the details. It must have been amazing in person! I agree as has already been stated it’s a beautiful piece of art.
