Resilient

From the unbelievable Alabama Hills, Easter Sierra. Unfortunately, I missed out by 1 day getting snow on the ground here in the Alabama Hills but I do like this take with the snow covered Sierra. One of my very few cactus images so I thought I would post. Cheers

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Any and all Feedback is great

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Z7, 24-70mm lens @ 24mm, ISO 80, 1/30th @ f/18 Processed in LR only with frame added in PS

3 Likes

David, mix of bright, colorful cactus in the foreground and those brooding snowy mountains and sky in the distance looks great. There’s enough terrain between the cactus and the mountains to show off the land nicely even as you’ve created a very moody view.

Love the warm and cold tones in the picture and it feels (to me) really well balanced. My eyes are drawn from the cactus, all the way to the mountains in the background. I was wondering if there needed to be more space around the cactus, but I don’t think there does. Really great photo David. I need to visit these Alabama hills one day.

This is a great image. I love the colors, and the cactus in the FG works very well. If to say something, maybe one idea could have been to reduce the empty area just behind the cactus. I just did a quick processing of your image to show what I mean.

A nice find – I don’t remember cactus being that common there. I like @Ola_Jovall’s version. I have the feeling that the color contrast between the FG and the very blue mountains is a bit artificial looking. That’s easy to tweak, just by working on the blues with no selections or masking needed.

resilient-dm

I really want to thank @Ola_Jovall , @Mark_Seaver , @Diane_Miller , and @david20 for you comments. Ola, I really like what you did to remove some of the background behind the cactus. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you do that? Well done!!!
Diane, I also love what you did by desaturating the blues in the sky. I love it. More realistic looking for sure. Thanks so much for taking the time to do that.

David, here is a short description of how it was made. I use Luminar AI, but I am sure that the same could be done in Photoshop even if the nomenclature may differ.

  • Open the image
  • Import the image as a texture, and place the texture so that the cactus is in the new wanted positiion
  • Use the paint brush to paint the cactus into the new position. The red-colored part in the image below is the paint brushed part
  • Crop away the lower part

To do this was simplified by the fact that the structure, color etc. in front of the cactus where almost the same in the original position as in the new position.
Luminar AI

Thank you very much Ola. I have Luminar 4 as well as AI downloaded and while I don’t regularly use them, I can easily work my way around both programs. Thanks for showing me this. I really appreciate it. You’ve created a better image for sure. No dead space in the middle.

I wonder if Content-aware Scale in Photoshop would work to foreshorten the mid-distance? I’ve only used it a couple of times, long ago, and never used it on a subject with this much detail in the area I wanted to shorten.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/content-aware-scaling.html

I have never tried content aware scale before Diane but it sounds like it might do the trick. Thanks so much for recommending it and sending that super cool article. I’m not super versed in photoshop so this will entail some exploration for me. Thanks again!!!