In 2018 my now wife and I embarked on a road trip from our home in Oregon to Alaska with our truck and camper. What a trip that was. I have never been the same since, the amount of beauty that I was able to see is something that I will never take for granted! This image I took off of the side of the road on our way down the Kenai Peninsula on the way to Seward where we eventually found a pretty spot to exchange our vows. I showed my wife this image yesterday and she told me she never remembered this part of the trip, I had to break her heart and tell her it was because she was sleeping. Snooze you loose!
Any and all feedback is wanted. This is the first image that I have tried dodging and burning. I did my best not to go overboard and have been sitting on this for a little while now and think its ready for someone else’s eyes to critique!
Thanks for checking it out
-Jeff
Shot on sony a6300 handheld 37mm (crop sensor) f/11 ISO 100 1/125 sec
Editited in LR Classic
IG: @upperleft_jeff
You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
Jeff this is a beautiful scene, and I think your composition is nicely balanced. I also love the spring colors of the leaves and the way they mix in with the darker spruce trees. I assume that you dodged some of the spring leaves, and I like how they look. your processing has done a nice job with the dappled light on the landscape.
My only suggestion would be a slight bit more contrast to the sky. The dark tones in the clouds might be helped by a little more contrast. Distant skies should be lighter and more hazy than than the foreground, but as a matter of personal taste, i could see a little more contrast in the clouds.
Thanks, @Ed_McGuirk! Yes, I dodged a little bit on the lighter color spring foliage and burned some of the darker areas of the spruce trees and I was very happy with the results, especially after toggling between having it and not.
A wonderful scene with lots of lush greens! The dodging and burning indeed does not look unnatural. It’s always nice to toggle the layer(s) on and off and see the difference, they can be really powerful. I’m with Ed, about the sky. I think more contrast, or a slight vignette, will strengthen the scene.
Agree with Ed that this is a beautiful landscape and I like the balance and the crop you chose.
Great job with the dodging/burning. I would have never guessed you had done that, so this all looks quite natural. It helps too that it looks like the lighting conditions were dappled, changing and so the landscape can easily have dark and light areas as the clouds pass over head.
I agree somewhat on the sky, but i’m not so sure it necessarily needs more contrast. Certainly if you were to adjust that, I wouldn’t make that top cloud any darker.
Not sure where you’re at processing wise as you mentioned just processing in LR. I think with some luminosity or color masking you could drop the sky exposure like a 1/2 stop. Not much, but mostly the lighter blue and sky along the mountain ridge. In fact, if you’re dodging/burning, you could just burn down that sky area above the ridge. Hope that makes sense.
Other than that, no real nit picks to speak of. And regardless of all that, you’ve got an image here that will be special to you and your wife for many years to come…
Thanks @Ron_Jansen and @Lon_Overacker. I’ll attach what I got now. I have used range masks in LR with luminosity with success. Burning the sky and just using the adjustment brush in general is something I am now applying to my post processing. I am no longer working on a tiny macbook air and have a new workstation set up at my home with a desktop which makes it a lot easier to edit my photos!
Excellent! thanks for taking the time to rework and considering the suggestions. The sky looks much better to my eye and one of the results is that this appears to have more clarity (not the LR adj… just less hazy). Well done!
