Jennifer and I were wandering in a canyon in Death Valley, she had noticed this wall of incredible rocks last year and created a stunning image. This year I tried my hand at this wall and used a wide to accentuate this unique formation I noticed. It has no sense of scale which I think is neat, makes it quite abstract.
Specific Feedback Requested
I’ve been staring at this a while and probably need to step away, so any little nits are appreciated.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Only thing of note is this was taken at 15mm equivalent focal length.
I love all the triangles formed by the fracture sets. The iron staining on the fracture surfaces form interesting abstracts by themselves. I’d love to spend a few hours extracting closeups from this outcrop.
David, this is an excellent collection of colors and angles. the blue to red color changes are terrific. The lack of perspective is fun and has me wondering if I’m looking up or down…you could rotate this 180 degrees or flip it vertically for fun.
I thought the same as Mark. I can’t tell if I am looking up or down. The mix of warn and cool colors provides a nice contrast. The perspective shapes and colors make for a wonderful abstract.
I really enjoy this style of image. Abstract, but not. Shapes, lines, textures… Very cool
My reaction to the image is the light is a bit to monotone. I played a bit with some luminosity masks to separate the darker tones form the lighter tones, a selection to touch the bluer tones and a tiny bit of saturation through a mask for the redder tones.
Yes the geological formations have a true artful look to many of the structures we see. I for one have photographed a lot of rock formations over the years…
I was curious as to the image title?..
Oh My goodness David. First, this has to be viewed large to really appreciate. The colors and geometric shapes just pop off the screen when viewed large. There is so much to enjoy with this image. It’s all about sqaures, rectangles and triangles with incredible complimentary colors. Z
Zoomed in, I love the bottom left corner with all of the “tiles” and abstract pieces that section has to offer. I also love the center section that looks like a curving staircase.
I really like what @Keith_Bauer did to bring out a little bit more pop and color separation. I’m heading to Death Valley next month and I sure hope to get something this good.
Because no color profile is assigned to the image. In PS if you go Edit > Assign Profile > and check the sRGB box it will look like it displays on the NPN website. About 20% of the images I download at NPN for reworks have this issue, but it’s a simple fix.
I can’t look at this without remembering the title and thinking it is part of Phoenix rising from the Ashes rather than just Phoenix. I agree there is a lack of perspective, and other rotations could create interesting results (especially 90 degrees CCW), but being locked into the rising aspect makes me believe you took it from the top of a cliff looking down (although it is probably looking up). Awesome image and title.
Well, this is pretty cool, I definitely see the rising Phoenix spreading it’s wings. Death Valley does not immediately leap to mind if I was asked to guess the location of this, what a neat find. I just love the geometric shapes and angles here, and how they appear to be rising. Great vision on your/Jen’s part to see this .
It’s a matter of personal taste, but he lower left quadrant looks a bit brighter than I would prefer. I did a rework burning that area, and the LRC, thru a midtones luminosity mask. I think it helps bring the Phoenix forward a bit. I left the top half alone, I like how that looks in the original post.
Here is my rework. I thought it looked to fuzzy (darks look muddy) and I thought the dark upper section didn’t add much. So I modified it. Only problem is that it no longer looks like a Phoenix but a face done by Cubists. Perhaps something useful can be gleaned from this.
Hi David,
I love all the colors in this one!
I played with it, but just made a super subtle change. I tried a few small radial gradients, one was inverted and barely bumped to blue/then I subtracted out the yellows, and another one around the featured rock that I added some white, and nudge in the white balance with a color range selected. I’d probably spend more time with a more careful selection, but my thought was just to pop the orange color out just a little bit, and shift the vignette with color. But just barely. I really love where you have it already.
Thank you Bill, it is a truly fascinating section of rock where we spent a LOT of time
Thank you Kelly, I was not able to see like this when I started, it didn’t come naturally for me and I had to learn it and you can too! I would recommend reading about and practicing contemplative photography, this practice completely changed the way I look at the world.
Thanks Tom!
I don’t see any reason why this would be happening @Igor_Doncov , it’s sRGB so it shouldn’t be a color space issue, did you download it from the download link when you open the lightbox?
I actually did experiment with flipping this! It was very abstract which I quite liked, but you lost the Phoenix rising effect which is what drew me to this in the first place so I stuck with the original, but I may be able to reuse the flipped version of another project!
Thank you Eva!
Thanks Keith, I will experiment with this a bit and see if I can separate the tones just a bit more
Thanks Paul, the reference was to a Phoenix rising, that’s what I saw anyway
Thank you Dan!
Thank you David, I appreciate the kind words. We will be in DV until the end of Feb, let me know when you arrive if you want to say hi!
Thanks Ed, great tip!
That’s what I was going for Jim, I’ll change the title to Phoenix Rising! I was indeed looking up for this at an overhanging cliff.
Thanks Ed, I will experiment with this a bit when I have some time! I burned that corner down a fair amount, but I can try pushing it a little farther.
Thank you for the feedback Igor, I’ll see if I can extract a bit more detail out of the top shadows, but I also want to keep the Phoenix shape well defined.
Thank you @Christine_Franzen ! I will play with this idea as well, I appreciate you taking the time I hope you’re doing well and we can see you soon!
I hope you’re doing well and we can see you soon!