I took this on a fine morning a couple of days ago. It was the last shot of the outing. By this time the light was quite harsh but a high level haze helped reduce it for about 20 minutes giving me enough time to do this focus stacked image. I have attempted to add more color to the image but it just seems to lose its subtle beauty when I do that. Here I am using one of Fuji’s profiles.
I like the subtle, natural-looking tones that you’ve achieved with this image Igor. You have really good balance in the composition and you placed that foreground bush in just the right spot to weight the scene perfectly. Even the dead remnants in the lower-left corner add a needed piece of the composition puzzle in this busy scene.
I would burn down the bright orangish-yellow stem in the upper left region and I’d also clone out the small branch that is sticking out in front of the saguaro cacti and possibly clone out the orange twig that appears to be just hanging just in from the right edge about half way up. Not a huge distraction but it does catch my eye just a little.
The light doesn’t look harsh so that cloud cover you got seemed to help with this image. Looks very, very natural to me.
This is a really fine desert scene. Very understated, which works quite well. Real nice job on creating a coherent composition out of a potentially chaotic setting. The lighting looks good and quite natural, with some beautiful highlights. I would agree with @David_Haynes on all his suggestions and don’t have any others. Very well done.
I amazed by the variety of cactus species in just this one small area. As usual, your composition works well, putting a nice sense of structure and order into the image. The soft light works really well here. The only thing I would bother cloning away is the orange leaf on the right. This is purely a matter of personal taste, but given that there is a little light in the scene, I could see a very slight warming of the image overall.
Yes, that’s essentially what I had in mind, for me it only needed a little, and the subtle change works for me. It’s good to know that you did make it down to Baja this year, despite the pandemic. I enjoy seeing your images from there.
I find that it’s overall better but there are two places it got worse. The tall cactus and the bush at the very front are beautiful for their characteristic bluish colors. Some of that is gone now. I suppose that could be fixed by merging the two versions but it would be a bear to do that with the bush. The bush has subtle colors that aren’t apparent in sunlight.
I’m in a small village where the pandemic was held at bay all year until Christmas. Now people are dying. There are many ways to die here. I ended up driving into a field of cacti yesterday while looking for a composition. I got pretty shook up.
Not being familiar with these cacti, I did not know that. You asked for a merge and here it is. The tall cactus was easy to paint on a mask to reveal the cooler version (layer), The foreground cactus was easy too, using TK luminosity masks (lights 2 modifed selection ) to paint on the mask. Because the foreground cactus is brighter than it’s surrounding area, painting black thru a Lights mask made this a snap to do, revealing the cooler layer underneath, with the white mask on the warm layer…
Igor, the subtle colors and comp. in this scene look great. The bright but flat light lets all of the details show beautifully. The wide variety of species make this a view to look at again and again.
Igor, enjoyed your post not only for the technicals mentioned earlier but the beauty of the various plants presented so well. Your composition is expertly balanced. Your post and related comments is also a learning experience for me. Thanks.
Wayne
Igor, what a fine desert garden. I enjoy the odd combination of austerity and busy-ness of the scene. The upward thrusts of the candelilla in the foreground echoed by the thrusts of the agave work really well for me. Your stacking worked very well to capture detail and color.
I downloaded it before reading other comments, and had similar observations. In addition, I wondered if the brightness of the distant rock wall could be subdued a bit.
I am in agreement with you, Igor, it is full of textures and layers and it’s what the desert is all about in some places, when lush with vegetation. Your composition created stepping stones for us to move through the scene, from one succulent to a cactus to another and a trio of three main subjects stands out well. Initially comments about warming up the image were countered about losing the blue-grey of the candelilla and agave, and I agree. @Ed_McGuirk did a fine job of merging and using TK masks. If using lightroom and the target tool, perhaps, you might also be able to easily achieve that, as long as it didn’t also affect the two bluish plants. overall I think the image is well done and expresses the desert very well.
Absolutely lovely, Igor. I do like the blue tones of the cactus in the FG, and wouldn’t want to lose that. This is so balanced. There’s a lot going on, but it’s not busy. I’d say it’s a classic still life, of the desert, and print it big.
Thank you for your comments and suggestions. I have incorporated some and posted them above next to the original. I appreciate the time and effort you took to look at this image. The warmer tones do make the image look more optimistic somehow, don’t they?
I love the scene, Igor, but like the warmed scene better. The cloning of the leaf struck me as funny. I didn’t even notice it, but it being cloned out does help.
