In the upland prairie at Chip Ross Park looking west towards the Coast Range. I crouched down in the grass to hide buildings. Taken the end of August right before the valley became filled with smoke from the fires.
Anything!
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
ISO 200
86mm
f/20
1/250
Adjusted exposure, shadows, highlights slightly
Lovely layering in this one Vanessa. The color contrasts, gold/green/cyan, look great together. It looks just a little dim on my monitor; I think it could be brightened a bit.
If you have a chance, shoot this same scene in the golden hours; I bet the layering and textures would be even better.
@John_Williams Thanks John, Iām glad you like it! Iāve wanted to get here for a sunrise but the valley is usually so socked in at that time, at least this time of year! Iām sure sometime. Iāll have to see if I can make it brighter without compromising the clouds! Thanks for the feedback!
@John_Williams This was the best I could come up with, I personally think it looks washed out, especially the grasses in the front, in the sun they really are that golden color in the first photo. My gut says it just needs to be a whole different picture with different lighting, if you get a chance Iād love your thoughts on this! ā¦
Hereās the histogram from your original image:
Notice how the highlights on the right are missing. In the majority of images thatās a good clue. Your second image is much brighter, and looks more realistic, with a much more spread out histogram.
With that said, a camera canāt do what our eye can; we bounce between highlights and shadows effortlessly, and our brain puts it all into a perfect image subconsciously. Often when we get great highlights in a processed image the shadows suffer, and vice versa. In your second image, everything got brighter and it looks a little washed out, as you noted. The power of software that can adjust with curves and masks is that you can target tones and areas, which letās you get much closer to what you eye would have seen when you were there.
Hereās a version with a couple quick edits. On my monitor, I tried to get those highlights involved without washing out the scene. (I also tried to add a bit more detail in the sky, and moved the sky color away from being so cyan.) As always monitorās calibrated differently will show very different results with the same image, and that might be part of the story here too.
@John_Williams Hi John, thank you! Iām seeing that what you did does make the image a little brighter. I have a question about that and Highlights. For instance this photo was taken looking West , which I thought the sky looked nice being illuminated from the sunrise in the East right after the sun had risen, so it wasnāt very light out at this point and there were a lot of shadowsā¦in every photo situation should the histogram always be filled? Another scenario, after you told me this, which is great by the way because I never really knew what it all meant, I went to some of my sunrise photos and saw there are practically no highlights but when I move things over then there is no sunrise! Am I doing something wrong? I probably will be posting a sunrise photo soon and would love to get your feedback on that too. Thank you so much for your feedback and time!
Just a really quick double check that will help me answer better. In the image below, do you see 11 distinctly different shades of gray?
Yes! Very clearly! The darkest looks black and the lightest looks white.
I replied in Discussions, so that hopefully more will see and add their thoughts.
Hey Vanessa, I am going to add some of my thoughts here. [quote=āVanessa_Hill, post:6, topic:20257ā]
in every photo situation should the histogram always be filled?
[/quote] Noā¦filling the histogram is all about contrast and contrast is associated with mood. When I think about contrast I often think about a foggy scene over a lake which is very calming to me and is often portrayed as a low contrast scene with not much in the darker areas and a lot more in the midtones leading into the highlights depending on the situation. On the other hand a lot of mountain scenes or sunrise/sunset scenes have a lot of contrast and have a much more energetic feeling to them, excitement! I would suggest looking at some of the processing videos from Alister Benn, he goes into great detail on Luminosity and Contrast (he even has a book on it, I think there is a free video in the webinars section of NPN also!). David has a great series on tones, which helps understand how to draw out information in the different areas on your histogram. But in my opinion, no, not every shot should have a filled histogramā¦its about the mood you are presenting.
Luminosity, contrast, and saturation are all related. For example if I increase the luminosity of an image overall I am reducing the overall saturation. This is seen most in the brighter parts of the image because they tend to already be the least saturated, for example the highlights/clouds in your sunset image I am assuming. If you remove contrast from an image it also will reduce the overall saturation. You can obviously compensate for this by adding it back in overall or selectively to areas you want to keep interest. A good test for this is in Photoshop, if you take an image and make a curves adjustment to it, or brightness contrast, or levels to increase the contrast then switch the layer from Normal mode into Luminosity you can see a massive difference in how the information is changed.
These are massive generalizations obviously, but hopefully it helps.
Hi John, thanks for all the details and the discussion, I need to read it over again to totally understand, but I just wanted to revisit this one more time. You say that this 2nd image looks more realistic. Is it because of the image itself, looking at it as an outsider who wasnāt there and has no idea of the time of day it was taken? Or because of the histogram? Because I agree, that if this were taken maybe between 11am and 1 pm it could look this way, but not at 7 in the morning which is around the time it was taken. Sorry if Iām beating a dead āhorseā or more a dead āimageā! 
but I just really want to understandā¦
@David_Wallace Thanks, so much, David, for your explanation. I think bringing everything together is making a little more sense. Because from the little Iāve learned outside of NPN there are many instances where the histogram is not going to be balanced. I guess maybe itās a good guide and tool to go by but not always the rule. Thanks for contributing and your time!
I apologize! Your metadata says that this was taken at 11:34 am, and the lack of contrasting shadows made me assume that the metadata was correct. ALWAYS (at least, IMHO), the photographer who was there and experienced the moment is in the best position to interpret the photograph they took. The rest of us are just tossing out suggestions for the original photographer to consider; sometimes itās helpful and sometimes itās not. As the photographer, you get to choose what you what sounds like a good suggestion and what does not. My entire initial comment was based on my misunderstanding, and again I apologize for complicating the conversation.
@John_Williams not a problem! I never changed my new time-zone and had no idea that times were even recorded in there until a few weeks ago when I was looking back at some sunrise photos and it said 9:30 AM! When I knew that I woke up at 4 to get to my destination by 5:30 to get there before the sun rose! And then with different feedback from you and others on some different photos I was realizing that was the reason for the reactions! I didnāt realize other people could see that info! So I think I have it all right now! Thanks!
