As in the John Wayne Movie, on Owl Creek Pass.
Looking at some pics taken a few years ago in Ridgway when the leaves suffered from a blight due to excess rain. In some cases, I think black and white may be the answer. Converted this one through Nik.
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Kathy, thatâs a very dramatic sky and what a wonderful rock to pair it with. I canât put my hands in what bothers me about the tonality. I suspect it is the similarity in tones between the aspens at the base and the cliff, but I am not quite sure. Could you elaborate on why you went B&W with this image??
Kathy, the setting of the cliffs and rock pillar against a great sky is nicely dramatic. The aspens in the foreground add well to the atmosphere. There look to be a number of small dark spots scattered throughout the sky that Iâm guessing are dust spots. I think going b&w works well here, but I too wonder if an alternate b&w approach might work better. Hopefully some of the big time b&w folks will chime in.
HI Adhika
I went B and W because the aspen were just not a wonderful color. A kind of dark dead orange with some gold. Just not pretty. Also, they drew attention (bad attention) away from the shapes of the rock and I wanted to emphasize that.
Mark
I did not see the dust spots because they were not in the original color photo. That is really weird. Just noticed that there are some black and white articles in the latest âoutdoor photographerâ. Planning to read that before I do another conversion.
Ah i see. May I suggest double processing this? Perhaps with a blue filter or so to make the aspen in the FG darker and set off the cliff nicely?
Hi Kathy. I pretty much only do b/w images. I use a combination of Nik, PS, and Lightroom. I started with Nik and still really like a couple of functions available. Specifically, I use the dynamic brightness slider, then the soft contrast sliders. The same things can be done many other ways, but I like those two functions. I also use the color channel adjustments in Nik and sometimes Iâll play with the color filters and their adjustments. I have learned to not use the Structure functions ever. Using that slider can make the image crunchy in a heart beat. Photoshop tools are a much more powerful way to bring the full tonal and textural qualities out of the image. There is a significant learning curve, which at this point, I might be a 2nd grader. The whole point is that it doesnât take a ton of expertise to develop an acceptable workflow. I love the composition of your image. It has all the elements it needs. A heavy, or even not heavy hand in Nik can result in artifacts like halos along the mountain sky line and flatten the transitions in the subtle tones like those in the pines in the middle of the image. There appears to be a whole range of tones in the image, from the snow to the darks in the shadow areas. As presented, there is really just a lot of middle grey. There is a ton of good info available out there. I would make another run at this image, cause I think it could be really good.
