A hand held focus stack of the Ogilvie mountains in the Canadian north. Any comments, opinions or critiques are very much appriciated.
Blake, for all I know, this reminds me of Patagonia. Absolutely love the cloud that you have got there. I think you have nailed the tonality on the clouds. I really like the darkening towards the top edge, I think that’s very well done. I am not too crazy about the composition: I think what’s going on at the lower third doesn’t do what you have above it justice. As an alternative, perhaps you could highlight the leaves in the FG a little more to accentuate their profile that mimics the shape of the mountain. What do you think?
This is a nice and dramatic one! Those clouds are so nice. I like how you made the tones throughout the image match well with a bronze-y look.
For a very moody image, I thought the highlights throughout the image were looking a little hot so I reduced them with a luminosity mask on a curves layer. To focus the eye toward the peaks in the center, I added a vignette, and did some burning of the light areas of cloud around the mountain to try and make it stand out more. I burned the light areas on the mountain because they looked a little intense and the midground, because there’s not a lot going on there.
What do you think?
I guess that may have been a roundabout way of making just about everything darker but the peaks. This at least looks better on my screen to me, but maybe our screens are calibrated differently? Usually your processing is spot on. Did you edit on a calibrated monitor set to 120 cdm/2?
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I know this location @Blake_Randall. Lol. I love this shot. Interesting also what you did. I believe I understand what you are doing. I bet it would make a nice moody BW.
Thanks @Adhika_Lie Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of the composition. This fog bank rolled in out of no where and kind of caught me off guard which led to a tripodless botched focus stack lol. I have definitely considered turning this into a pano.
Thanks @Brent_Clark, I think bringing down the highlights is a nice improvement. Its always nice to see a different perspective on an image.
Thanks @Greg_Stokesbury, I’ll give that a try.
Blake, I really this image a lot, I think the idea of matching the toning of color in the sunlit mountain and the foreground vegetation is absolutely brilliant, very creative thinking. It only adds to the level of drama that is already in the scene. I like the direction that @Brent_Clark took in his rework, it takes the moodiness factor up a notch. The only thing I don’t like about Brent’s changes is the reduction in luminosity of the foreground vegetation. I took a stab at another re-work, adding some more vignette, some more mid-tone contrast in the sky, and darkening the highlight portion of the mountain (similar to Brent).
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Thanks Ed, looks great! Those highlights were definitely a bit hot.