First Light in the Badlands, Death Valley NP

[Jimmy_Arcade]

This image was taken just before sunrise, from an off-beat hiking trail, near Zabriskie Point, in Death Valley National Park. The “Badlands” are full of potential compositions for intimate landscapes, as well as grand vistas. The soft, quiet light brushes against the hills and formations, revealing some of most wonderful colors.

What technical feedback would you like if any?

Any comments and critiques welcome.

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Any comments and critiques welcome.

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

This is a non-standard pano crop, from an original 3:2 aspect ratio image. I cropped in tight, as this is the part of the image that really spoke to me. In Lightroom, cropped, made basic adjustments, and brought out natural colors through RBG channel adjustments in the LR tone curve. In Photoshop, I dodged/burned with luminosity masks, to increase depth, added minor Orton effect, used curves adjustment to darken mid-tones, and added a slight, free-hand vignette.

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@jimmyarcade

[Eugene_Theron]

Hey Jimmy, This composition is excellent. I love the way the lines flow and interact with each other. All by drawing you into the frame.

My cc revolves around the colour work. I have not been here so please correct me if I’m wrong but the colours seem a bit pink and washed out to me. In my head the rocks are quite ornage/red with some greyey blues going on from other images I’ve seen. This to my eye is quite pastel (if that was your intent you’ve done a really good job). I would look at adding some more contrast into the image too, to really accentuate the lines and the separation between the interlocking geology. This should add some addtional depth to the shot.

Cheers,
Eugene

[Jimmy_Arcade]

Hi @Eugene_Theron , thank you, kindly, for taking the time to offer a very helpful, constructive critique.

I can understand why you would think the colors seem a bit pink and washed out. Believe it or not, my WB adjustment has no boost in the magenta tint and I did not do anything to add those pink colors that are not already there. Vibrance and Saturation were zeroed out. This specific spot in the valley has some rock formations that are very soft to eye (i.e., pastel), when the early morning light brushes over it; it’s a very soft light. The only thing I did to bring out the colors was adjust all of the RGB channels in the LR tones curve, in order to reveal all of the true colors the camera’s rendering did not capitalize on.

I agree with you that adding more contrast, in order to accentuate the lines and separation between the intersections of the geology, would be a good idea. I wanted to keep it soft (and actually decreased clarity slider in LR), but I will look at ways I can potentially add that kind of contrast in a tasteful way, without darkening the image too much. I wanted it light and airy, as that it essentially how it was. There was very little contrast, because it was not a harsh lighting condition. If you have any suggestions for adding depth, without introducing too much micro-contrast, I would be grateful for any such advice.

I’ve attached a version of the full, non-cropped image, with fairly close to raw adjustments (w/ exception of auto-WB, exposure, black point, white point, etc…), to give you sense of what it actually looked like.

Cheers!

[Kerry_Gordon]

Jimmy, I think this is a gorgeous image. What the colours “really” looked like, seems entirely irrelevant to me. This speaks to me as an abstract. It has a beautiful sense of depth, flow and texture and, personally, I love the colour palette. My one critique would be the aspect ratio. You’ve decided on a pano, which, to me implies horizontality, in other words, moving across the frame, left to right or right to left. But for me, that is not what this image is about. For me it is about depth. I don’t want to go across the frame, I want to go “into” the frame. Indeed, I’m drawn into the frame but despite the aspect ratio not because of it. I feel like the aspect ratio you’ve chosen undermines one of the image’s greatest strengths, it’s implied depth. For that reason, I think something like a 4:5 aspect ratio would much better support this image.

[Jimmy_Arcade]

Hi @Kerry_Gordon, thank you for taking some time to review my image and offer your constructive critique. It’s very helpful and I very much appreciate both the complimentary comments, as well as the suggestions for improvement.

With regard to the aspect ratio, I can certainly understand what you are saying and don’t necessarily disagree with you. I did play around with 4:5 and other aspect ratios. While those crops certainly can contribute to adding a sense of depth and are more aligned with standard images, none of it felt right for my own eye. For me, it comes down to intention, as Alister Benn frequently talks about.

My intention was to highlight the interplay of the scene, via a bookend, between the bottom-left and top-right corners of the image. From my perspective, this bookend created strong triangular strokes of color, which both suggest finality and continuity of the landscape, without having to show the rest of the scene. My hope was that this would help the viewer’s eye to dance around the frame, while still understanding this scene is a small part of a grander landscape and let their imagination fill in the gaps. Hopefully, I succeeded in communicating this, but I suppose I’m limited by my own imagination and I certainly appreciate you sharing your perspective. I still have a good deal more to learn about cropping and aspect ratios, so your suggestions were certainly food for thought.

With this crop (while not ideal from an image resolution perspective or in conveying a greater sense of depth), I found the interaction of the tones, between the two opposing downward slopes, more important than the appearance of depth. In my mind, this bookend (for lack of a better word) created a playful element, because these two sides of a small canyon were continually bouncing light and shadows back-and-forth. My own imagination, then, drew a parallel to something beautiful and pure, like two joyful children playing catch with a ball.

I’m grateful for your detailed feedback, Kerry.

Cheers!

[Marylynne_Diggs]

Nice work here! I like the colors and can see the benefit of adding some contrast or clarity to define the lines.

If it were mine(but it’s not, so grain of salt and all that) I would try to minimize the pull of the white bit to the right. I did a quickie crop in my iPhone and think that this might keep the left to right reading and also pull us into the holllows. Edit: Looks like I didn’t quite get all of the white, but this is close.

Great image!
ML

[Ed_McGuirk]

Jimmy, this has been an interesting discussion so far. I especially agree with the comments made by @Kerry_Gordon. I too like the color pallette that you used, and twilight can create the purple and magenta tones you have here. I don’t care whether colors are “true to the scene”, as long as they are believable and tastefully handled.

But I also agree with Kerry on the aspect ratio. After seeing your raw file above, I just think the wider view has so much potential to tell a different story, one about depth and scale. Not that your intimate abstract doesn’t work, because it does, but that wider view is also very intriguing to me.

Color and saturation are very much a matter of personal taste. The colors in your post are strong, but certainly within the realm of believable, you did it for creative effect, and that’s perfectly fine.
To my personal taste, the magentas are a bit more saturated than I would prefer You said that you zeroed out saturation and vibrance. But both adding contrast and doing the TK Orton can add saturation as well. The magenta saturation here looks more like it’s boosted by Orton. Did you apply Orton to the whole image? I often prefer to apply it to a L1 or L2 selection at lower opacity for a subtle effect.

I think what you have posted works well. I would also encourage you to explore the wider scene as well. If this were mine, i would take it in a direction like this.

[David_Kingham]

Hey Jimmy, I’m really enjoying this composition. It’s not traditional and it really puts focus on that taffy like curve in the foreground. It feels quite dynamic to me and keeps my eye drawn in. I’ll have to agree with others on the color, it is personal but I feel it’s a little over the top with magenta and takes away from the power of this image. I would also agree with Ed that my initial reaction was too much Orton, I would also constrain it to the light tones and dial it back a bit. Just for reference this is where I would personally take the colors. This would like nice on your wall

[Jimmy_Arcade]

@Marylynne_Diggs

…enefit of adding some contrast or clarity to define the lines.If it were mine(but it’s not, so grain of salt and all that) I would try to minimize the pull of the white bit to the right. I did a quickie crop in my iPhone and think that this might keep the left to right reading and also pull us into the holllows. Edit: Looks like I didn’t quite get all of the white, but this is close.Great image!ML

Hi @Marylynne_Diggs , thank you for your sharing some positive feedback and offering suggestions for improvement. I’m grateful for you taking the time to do so.

Your suggestion to crop off of the right part of the frame, in order to remove the white portions, is well received. After you mentioned this, I did play around with this crop in Photoshop and engaged in an internal debate about that, the amount of contrast, and the amount of saturation, until I drove myself crazy and realized I needed to get to sleep last night. Ha!

While I think this crop could work, it removes the sense of continuity that I was hoping to convey. As I mentioned in my response to Kerry (above), I wanted to convey both a sense of finality (i.e., the small scene is contained by the frame, itself), but also introduce continuity (i.e., give the viewer’s mind a chance to fill in the gaps), so that the viewer feels that this is part of a grander landscape. I hope that makes sense.

Many thanks for sharing the crop you had in mind. It certainly does feel more harmonious, in some ways. However, it is not quite what I’m going for.

Cheers!

[Jimmy_Arcade]

@Ed_McGuirk

Jimmy, this has been an interesting discussion so far. I especially agree with the comments made by

Hello @Ed_McGuirk, I agree that this has been an interesting discussion. I’m a newbie to NPN and I’m already very grateful to be a part of this community. Thank you for taking the time to contribute to the discussion. Your positive feedback and suggestions for improvement are much appreciated.

Yes, I agree that the twilight (which, admittedly, I have just recently learned is synonymous with “blue hour”) can introduce some incredible lighting and colorful tones. This part of Death Valley is certainly no exception, as the hills are rich with colors just waiting to be freed.

Regarding the aspect ratio, my first instinct was to go with a crop like the one you demonstrated. I played around with different crops and couldn’t quite get there. However, I do really like the crop you suggested and may end up using something like that in a second rendition of this image. It really does introduce depth and scale, as you mentioned. And I’m not subjected to the low resolution of my tight crop.

I appreciate the open-mindedness, regarding the color and saturation. I now realize my post-processing was a bit heavy-handed. I’ve been trying to scale that back and it seems I have a great deal more to learn and room to grow. Both @Kerry_Gordon and @David_Kingham offered the same advice, while also still respecting the fact that this is a subjective preference, like you did. I have a great deal of respect for the photographers in this NPN forum and the images they are creating, so I’m very open to taking this feedback to heart. While it’s a vulnerable position to be in, it’s vastly more valuable than getting confirmation bias from social media reactions.

You make a great point, when you mention the colors being strong, due to TK Orton and adding contrast. For contrast, while I did not use the contrast slider, I did adjust the RGB channels in the LR tone curve to bring out the vibrancy of colors, before bringing the image into PS. You are correct, in that I did use the TK7 panel to introduce an Orton effect, but I did not use any luminosity masking to create a more subtle effect. By pointing this out, you made me realize I use luminosity masks for nearly all of my adjustment layers, but have never done so for the Orton effect. With your help, I have come to realize applying this effect to the entire image makes my already heavy-handed processing a great deal more heavy-handed. Given this realization, I did some experimenting and used the TK L1 lights mask to confine the Orton to the highlights and I see a big difference. That was a bit of a revelation for me, so thank you!

I look forward to being able to return the favor and offer feedback on your images, once I get my bearings in this forum. For now, I’m mostly observing, as I don’t want to impose my over-processing preferences on others. Haha!

Cheers!

[Jimmy_Arcade]

@David_Pottinger_Dunn_Kingham

… I’ll have to agree with others on the color, it is personal but I feel it’s a little over the top with magenta and takes away from the power of this image. I would also agree with Ed that my initial reaction was too much Orton, I would also constrain it to the light tones and dial it back a bit. Just for reference this is where I would personally take the colors. This would like nice on your wall

Hi @David_Kingham, thank you for taking the time to review my image and offer up some helpful suggestions. I’ve been attending the Exploring Exposure webinars and have thoroughly enjoyed them! I was surprised to see you weigh in, as I didn’t know how involved the owner of NPN would be in the image critiques. As a new member of NPN, I’m very impressed with how this site is designed and the engagement it elicits, in such a mature and respectful way. Thank you for keeping this going!

I really appreciate the positive feedback on the composition and letting me know your eye is being drawn in. I know it’s not very standardized, so it’s helpful to know others see the same interesting aspects of this crop as I did when processing it. At the same time, the feedback I have received has been invaluable and I may also do a 2nd rendition of this image as wider scene, as I did like the crop @Ed_McGuirk demonstrated.

I was stoked, but also laughing when I read your description of a “taffy-like” curve in the foreground. I like it!

Just as you said “this would [look] nice on your wall”, I’ve since read the writing on the proverbial wall, in that I realize my post-processing leans heavy on the side of saturation and contrast. I’ve been making conscious efforts to dial it back, but it seems I have a lot more to learn. To that end, your and Ed’s remarks about the TK Orton were well received, as I had not previously thought of using a luminosity mask on the Orton effect. That was incredibly helpful!

I do like the version of the image you demonstrated. To be honest, I’ll probably end up landing somewhere in-between your color grading and mine.

I’ve attached a new image, after having made adjustments to the color balance. Hopefully, this reads better than the original version and it feels like the saturation is within reasonable bounds.

I’ll see you in the next webinar, on Apr 29th. I was excited to see all of the panelists for the Q&A! It should be quite a session.

Cheers!

[Ed_McGuirk]

@Jimmy_Arcade

You make a great point, when you mention the colors being strong, due to TK Orton and adding contrast. For contrast, while I did not use the contrast slider, I did adjust the RGB channels in the LR tone curve to bring out the vibrancy of colors, before bringing the image into PS.

I’m glad you took my comments constructively, and that I was able to offer some helpful suggestions regarding more subtle ways to utilize Orton. One followup point is about the contrast slider in Lightroom. Adding contrast does inherently increase saturation, and there are more ways to add contrast than just the LR contrast slider. Anything that makes lights lighter and darks darker is essentially adding contrast. I’m providing an example below, first is my original rework, which in hindsight is perhaps a bit too conservative on saturation. The second image is the first, but in the Lightroom Tone Curve I added +30 Lights, and -30 Darks, which increases contrast. The bump in saturation in the 2nd images is solely due to adding contrast.

When I aggressively adjust contrast, or add a stronger Orton effect, I will often go back and use the TK Saturation Mask to select the most saturated colors, and apply that to a Hue Saturation adjustment layer, to pull back on the saturation that gets added via contrast/Orton. The third image below shows running that on the 2nd image to pull it back a bit. This 3rd image has the benefit of increased contrast, but without too much unwanted saturation. The beauty of the TK Saturation mask is that it targets only the most saturated colors, leaving the rest alone.

If this were my image, then Image 3 would be where I would end up.

Image 1 - Original Rework

Image 2 - Original Rework plus Contrast - LR Tone Curve Lights +30, Darks -30

Image 3 - Image 2 plus reduced saturation of most saturated tones, via TK Saturation Mask

[Dick_Knudson]

@Jimmy_Arcade

Hi

I like your last rework, The subtler colors make the foreground light area more harmonious with the other parts of the scene. Wonderful information in the critiques and your discussion of them.

[Eugene_Theron]

Hi @Jimmy_Arcade. No worries at all.

Yeah, wow. It’s not at all how i expected it to look. It almost looks like a painting. I actually quite like it wide to with a slight crop from the top.

I would suggest maybe doing a very little bit of selective burning on the ‘shadow’ areas. Very subtly. Especially on the area that leads back from the prominent wave in the foreground. The interlocking bits. Lum masks may help out with it a bit. I’m not 100% sure what @David_Kingham did to his version of the shot in relation to the contrast but this is a good example of what I was talking about with regards to the contrast between elements.

It’s a fabulous shot and you should be really happy with it

[Tom_Nevesely]

This is excellent in every way, I love the colours, the forms and the overall ‘flow’ of this image. Beautiful, beautiful work!

[Bill_Fach]

Jimmy: I really don’t have anything to add in the way of critique that hasn’t already been mentioned but when I first saw this my initial impression was that it was one of Tony Kuypers’ badland images. I hope you will take that as the high compliment intended. Many kudos. >=))>

[Jimmy_Arcade]

@Ed_McGuirk

The third image below shows running that on the 2nd image to pull it back a bit. This 3rd image has the benefit of increased contrast, but without too much unwanted saturation. The beauty of the TK Saturation mask is that it targets only the most saturated colors, leaving the rest alone.If this were my image, then Image 3 would be where I would end up.

Hi @Ed_McGuirk , thank you for further explaining the concept of adding saturation, by way of adding contrast and providing example images of each approach. Your explanation was very helpful. While I had some understanding of how saturation is being increased when an image is darkened, for example, I did not realize the full extent. I’ve observed a similar result when dodging/burning, unless I change the blend mode to Luminosity.

The image adjustments you shared helpful illustrate your point well and was a bit of an education for me. I will definitely have to check out the TK Saturation mask. I’ve tried the color masks, but never thought to use the saturation mask.

Thank you, again, for all your guidance and shared knowledge. It’s much appreciated!

Take care,
Jimmy Arcade

[Jimmy_Arcade]

@Dick_Knudson

I like your last rework, The subtler colors make the foreground light area more harmonious with the other parts of the scene. Wonderful information in the critiques and your discussion of them.

Hello @Dick_Knudson, thank your joining the discussion and sharing your encouraging words on my last, re-worked version of the image. I agree about the subtlety of the colors creating a more harmonious scene. The constructive critiques I’ve received in this NPN forum have been invaluable. I’m grateful to be a part of the NPN community!

[Jimmy_Arcade]

@Eugene_Theron

…Hi did to his version of the shot in relation to the contrast but this is a good example of what I was talking about with regards to the contrast between elements.It’s a fabulous shot and you should be really happy with it

Hello @Eugene_Theron, Yes, I did like the crop @Ed_McGuirk suggested and the more I’ve looked at it, I think I will re-purpose the raw file for a wider crop, in the near future. There certainly is a different story to tell, regarding the aforementioned depth and scale.

I appreciate the additional advice to selectively burn the shadow areas. I actually tried to do this, but it kept resulting in more saturation being added to the shadow areas. Then, when I would reduce the saturation, the burning effect was reduced. I’ll have to play around with the TK saturation mask, to see if that will help.

Thank you for the “fabulous shot” compliment. I am happy with it, but we’ll see how I feel a month from now… Ha! Ever the perfectionist…never achieving perfection.

Cheers!

[Jimmy_Arcade]

@Tom_Nevesely

This is excellent in every way, I love the colours, the forms and the overall ‘flow’ of this image. Beautiful, beautiful work!

Hello @Tom_Nevesely, thank you for sharing descriptive feedback on my image. I’ve certainly had a lot of help from the generous photographers in this forum. Your positive commentary is also very much appreciated!