Went to this iconic but too often photographed location for sunset. Not much to see to the west, but to the south, well after sunset, things looked quite promising. The light was almost gone, requiring a longer exposure. The point of the image was color. I believe that point has been made. The island of aspen was particularly appealling.
Specific Feedback Requested
Earlier I posted an image from this same trip. It was quickly determined that the color balance was off and the saturation required further attention. It is my hope that this capture is seen as successful on both those counts. That said, even to my probably-not-fully-objective eye, this looks as if it is over-saturated. That said, PS curves tell me nothing is clipping, and in my mind’s eye this is what I remember. If you think something should be adjusted, please let me know.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
iso 100, 95mm, f / 14, 30 sec.
Mark:
This iconic location was indeed spectacular again this year. I’m pretty certain I was there during the same set of days that you were there based on the thread in your last post from this area.
I photographed this spot over the span of 4 days at different times of the day. While the colors were lovely, they didn’t look that intense.
My first reaction to the image is that is over saturated. The foreground is somewhat over. You mentioned that PS curves don’t say anything is clipping. That’s good, but that’s not the only metric.
The Sky / Mountains have a VERY strong cyan / blue color cast. The hill side on the top left is also showing a clear indication of a gradient that caused the top edge of it to be darkened unnaturally. I’m guessing there is a grad somewhere in the processing dealing with darkening the sky / mountains and it bled over too much. My version made a lame attempt to correct it, but it still shows.
I’ve taken a stab with the jpeg. Still not what I’d want from this image. Guessing you can work it from the RAW file and get a better result.
Update: After posting this, I went to my catalog and pulled up a couple of images from here. Even this version is over saturated in the foreground.
And then…I think toning down the mountains and removing the color cast works, but i think desaturating the foreground colors may have gone too far with Keith’s edit…so, I tried for the best of both worlds: keeping some of the brightness of the foreground color and toning down the mountains.
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I’m not understanding. Your edit is more desaturated in the FG than Keith’s.
I think if you combine @Keith_Bauer 's mountains with @Chris_Calohan 's FG it nails it.
Thank you, Michael, Chris & Keith. Yup, I do think the FG could benefit from reduced saturation. The hill top in the upper left of the frame darkened when I applied a filter from NIK color efex pro. (I used silver efex four years ago or so, but when it was no longer supported I turned my back on it.) Just downloaded the color plugin yesterday from DXO. Haven’t used it before. As far as the blue/cyan color cast goes, it may not be quite “natural,” but to my eye it is preferable. Or, maybe I am just too accustomed to B&W processing where I can largely manipulate tones however I want. I do, however, favor the color palette of the warm foreground with the cooler mountains/clouds. Plus, this was nearly a half hour after sunset.
