I found this scene on my trip to Utah this spring. I normally shoot black and white, but the reflected light and the contrast with the blue tones made me shoot this in color.
Specific Feedback Requested
It’s been so long since i’ve shot color, that I really didn’t know what to do with this and basically left it as shot. Does it need more color? more color contrast? less color? what do you think. I didn’t want the Juniper to cross into the blue background, but my location made that impossible.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
110mm @ f11 iso 100 0.4sec gfx 50r no filters
eterna setting in camera was loaded into the raw file. adobe color looked like velvia on steroids.
What a cool scene - the colors are amazing, with that bluish-purple in the background and the strong red-orange in the foreground. Because the colors are so strong and the overall tonality between the juniper and the rocks is similar, the juniper feels a little lost to me. I took a crack at trying to bring the tree out a bit. Did some dodging of the greens with a selective color filter in ACR, increased the saturation of the yellows, and desaturated the oranges of the rocks. In PS, did a selective color curve for the tree (using TK 7 panel) and brightened the background. Also gave it a bit of a crop from the bottom and right. See what you think. Perhaps someone with more experience photographing the canyonlands of Utah will chime in.
This is an interesting reflected light scene, and the juniper makes for a great subject. The composition works well for me, and creates a nice balance between warm and cool tones.
My first thought upon seeing this was to ask what could be done to make the juniper tree stand out more. I think to do that you need to address both luminosity and color. For luminosity, its that the top of the shelf where the tree is located has a luminosity that is bright enough that the tree does not stand out well. Rather than dodging the tree, I’d prefer to darken the area immediately around it, which will emphasize the tree more. In terms of color, I’d like to see more contrast between red and green (which would also pop the juniper more). I decided to do a rework where I globally added green. Evaluating color is subjective, but in this case I think it helps without losing the original warm/cool color contrast that attracted you to the scene.
Thank you for the comments and rework. I’ll take it into consideration. As I said, I already desaturated the scene and if I go further I lose the reason I shot the image. But I do agree the juniper is getting lost.
This looks and sound like the right way to make the juniper stand out.
I’m also thinking about cropping in a bit more. I’ll see what I can get done with the raw file.
Hi Matt. This tree shows a lot of character … a strong individual in a tough neighborhood. Understanding that you want the image to accentuate the tree, I played with it a bit. One way to emphasize the tree is to put it on a rule-of-thirds crash point, so cropped for that. Cropping in further would emphasize the tree, at the expense of the neighborhood. Tried to get rid of a lot of the whitish glare on rocks; de-haze on your raw file might work better for this. Burned the line of far rocks leading to the tree, and also the rock wall below the tree. vignetted a lot, and pushed some magenta saturation.
Thanks for the input it’s much appreciated. Looks almost like the velvia film simulation. The tree is the anchor but a lot of the reason I took the photo was the difference in the reflected and cool light in the background
