George Pass in the Colorado Rockies between Summit Co and Park Co. It was raining on the pass when we arrived but cleared right before heading back down. Actually had to desaturate some of the colors to prevent it from looking fake and over processed . I really like the mist still clinging in the valleys.
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
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Spectacular shot. Must have been a joy to behold. De saturating was a good idea. I think, however, the top clouds tend to divert my attention from that magnificent lower 80%. Perhaps a crop to eliminate down below the blue? It does cut off the top of the left tree which may not be to everyone’s liking. This is really wonderful.
I like the composition, the arrangement of trees creates a nice window into the long view towards teh foggy valley and distant mountains. I also like having the blue/yellow thing going on here.
While this is a matter of personal taste on my part, this image feels too over-processed. The color saturation of yellow and blue are both too strong for my taste. The shadows in the valley have been lifted too much, making grain more visible. This image has a lot of potential, and I think there is a nice nature story in this scene, but my preference would be for a more gentle job on the post-processing. I think dialing down the saturation would lend this image a more calm and gentle feeling, and improve it overall. Sorry, just my $0.02 worth.
I agree that the overlapping layers in the distant hills look great as do the foreground trees with their light and dark. I’m not a fan of the very top blue layer. I find the blue too strong but more importantly the stripe across the top doesn’t work compositionally. Having the left tree cropped would not be an issue for me.
Wow! That is one magnificent view, Kelly. I am enjoying the way the evergreens on the right and left sides frame the view of the receding ridgelines. I agree with @Ed_McGuirk’s suggestion on dialing back the saturation. I also agree with the shadows on the distant mountains being opened up just a little to much. This image is well worth tweaking a little more.
This is a beautiful image Kelly! I love the misty layers in the mountains and the sky has some great cloud texture. I have to agree with the shadows in the mountains. I sat through the Out of Chicago Live conference last weekend and the weeks prior webinars. I had an image similar to this that I took and processed in 2017, but it was from the Smoky Mountains. I did what I always did, lowered the highlights and lifted the shadows. It certainly is eye catching, but not very realistic. So I took that and I made a new virtual copy and started from scratch. Only marginally lifting shadows and lowering highlights to get an even exposure. Then I looked where the light was coming from and dodged and burned the mountain layers to give them depth. Give it a try and see which you like better. No harm, no foul. Good luck with that and I’d love to see what you come up with!
Kelly, composition is great as is the depth like others have mentioned. I’d be curious to see the original file you started with pre-edit. I can probably find more than a handful of images in my archives that ended up a little heavy handed on the edit and I can usually identify where my decisions went off track when I go back and look at where I started - usually trying too much to recover one area or another.
