Last weekend I viewed an exhibition of Ansel Adams’ images of wilderness from his early career, 1920’s-1950’s. I’ve been a fan forever and learned more about his printing and style, having finally seen some his prints in person. I even bought another Adams’ book for continued study and inspiration.
This image is presented as an interpretation of Adams’s style. I captured it mid-afternoon last Labor Day weekend in Rainbow Lake basin within the surrounding mountains of the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness, Colorado. I find this wilderness embodies a vintage Western landscape aesthetic and am just in love with it.
On that day there were plenty of clouds out and about so the light was constantly shifting and the wind was relatively calm. Under such conditions, bracketing mid-day photography gave me good results for B&W conversion.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
As I merged a stack of images for this image, I see a halo at the mountain ridgeline, left and “ghosting” of the cloud edge at ULC as a result of exposures of just moments apart. I’d appreciate comments about how to correct or mitigate such flaws. Any other technical feedback is welcome, too. I’ve attached a histogram of this image for reference. My next move with this image stack is to do some luminosity masking for comparison.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Since this image was inspired by Ansel Adams, feel free to critique it as an interpretation of his style, as well as exposure, light values, constrast, composition.
Any pertinent technical details:
Nikon D610
Nikon 28-70mm @ 28mm
6-image exposure stack
f/22
ISO 100
tripod
perhaps a circular polarizer
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Style, composition, exposure, and light values are fabulous! The composition doesn’t work for me. If the photo is about the lake and the mountains, the foreground is a distraction. It doesn’t lead my eye into the photo, rather it makes me want to examine the rocks. My suggestion is to crop out the rocks.
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Exposure feels very Anselish. I agree that the composition feels off. For me, it’s the sense that the left side is cut off. It just feels narrow, and perhaps a landscape orientation would work better?
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@Tony_Siciliano, @Marylynne_Diggs Thank you very much. I am always favorably surprised by comments on my images, especially when they make me stop to see something in a new way. This is one such case. I saw this set of elements as a vertical image but your comments have made me reconsider. Perhaps it’s just not as good as the horizontal frame. I’ll try that one next. Thank you.
One thing I remember from Ansel’s advice was to keep in mind near/far relationships, and I think he would have been giddy with the potential we have with focus stacking and so on. His view cameras with a tilt back weighed so much more, and didn’t give nearly as much feedback in the field. I am always struggling with Photoshop, but maybe reduce opacity of the two offending layers with mismatched clouds in the area with a brush? I know there are ways to mask or grow/clone stamp brush adjacent tones to cover or otherwise hide an obtrusive halo. It may be labor intensive, but there may be more automatic techniques. Jimmy McIntyre had an action featured on Petapixel.com awhile back.
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Lots to like about this! I do agree a wider scene would be an interesting comparison.
When I try to mitigate halos and ghosting, I find it critical to find which step actually created them and fix that, rather than to go back and repair after the halo is created. Did the problems show up with the stacking (as opposed to processing)? If so, how did you stack? Did you use automatic software, or by hand with layers and masking, or a different technique?
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Matt, I think your processing of exposure and contrast here is fine. I might add a stronger vignette, and/or burn down the upper left corner. There are also two dust bunnies to clone away in the sky above the mountain on the right.
I have to agree with some of the other comments about the composition having some issues. To me it feels like this is too cut off on both the left and the right. I’'d like to see more of the mountain to the right, and I’d like to see more of the foreground rocks to the left So @Marylynne_Diggs comment about using a horizontal orientation is a good suggestion.
I think using the rocks in a vertical for that near/far depth look could work. But the way you have the rocks laid out here, I think they point my eye to the center of the background of the image, and the to me the most interesting part of the background is the mountain on the right. If you had moved to your left and re-composed this vertical, then you could have centered the large mountain and have the rocks point to it. I think this would create a more symmetrical composition.
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Matt,
I can’t say I was never a great studier or follower of Adams - so I guess I’ll have to critique this with little reference to the Master… 
Although I must say your contrast and tonal range in this image is excellent.
Can’t really put my finger on it, but I agree with much of the concern about the composition. My biggest complaint - and actually has nothing to do with your image, is that I’m not a fan of the digital format - in the vertical. There seems such a gap between the foreground and background that there is often time a disconnect between the two. Here, you do have the nice mirrored reflection tying the two pieces together, but it still feels like two images.
My thought would be to crop the bottom removing the larger rock; which not coincidentally brings this to a 4x5 ratio (or appropriately the same ratio, but of Adam’s, 8x10…), the vertical is compress some and perhaps works better to present as a whole image. Not sure if that makes sense.
Torn about whether or not I like the small dark object just above center line on the left. Easy enough to get rid of.
Processing looks great. I’m not seeing any halo’s, so not sure what that’s about. Oh, and opening up the larger view I do see a few little dust bunnies in the clouds.
Lon
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@Bill_Gibson, Thanks for your ideas about fixing the halos and referring me to Jimmy McIntyre. I’m familiar with him.
@John_Williams I agree about fixing the problem rather than applying a bandaid. Thank you.
@Ed_McGuirk Thanks for your feedback about the composition. I have a horizontal as well as a multi-image pano that I can edit. I’ll shelve this one and turn my attention to those.
@Lon_Overacker Thanks, my friend. I appreciate all your comments, particularly those about the tones and contrast. I’m learning a thing or two with a little help from my friends. See my response to Ed above for how I’ll deal with this composition. I have so many better images that I’m just going to move on to one of those.
I prefer the mystery of the submerged rocks to the exposed rocks. They lead to the reflections. So I cropped from the bottom.
The mountain is an issue because we have a lot of it showing and we want to see more. I changed that so that the emphasis is on it’s slope and overlaps the distant mountains. Thus creating a layered effect. Now we no longer want to see both sides of the peak.
I feel that the dark parts of the water on the right should still be dodged, but you get the idea.
That’s the direction I would take this image.
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