Sony A77II
Sony 70-400G @ 400mm
ISO 200, 1/200 @ f8
Great Sand Dunes NP
I can’t imagine a more enjoyable morning than watching the dunes wake up and scanning the landscape with my long lens searching for compelling images. I liked the transition from shadow to light as the sun rose over the damp sand and the contrast of cool and warm light. All comments welcome. >=))>
For me this image is a pleasing abstract as I would not have known what the subject was without your intro. Interesting color play. Was it caused by clouds passing over the dunes or just the sun rising? Striking contrasts and shapes.
Bill,
Love this dune abstract. The shadow play along with the uniqueness of the wet patches of sand really make this one stand out. There’s just so much to explore here with all the different shapes, patterns, lines, etc. The large view is fun!
The only suggestion really would be to adjust the color of the shadow a bit. Shadow areas look a bit blue, if not a little purple-ish. Of course not having watched the light come up over the dunes and the scene, it’s hard to say if this rendition is any better or close to what you experienced.
I used a TK Darks mask selection and a Selective color layer to increase the yellow, drop the cyan a little for the darker shadow areas. Also a general Hue/Sat layer to desat the blue/cyan. Also a LAB color layer to bump the contrast very slightly. In general just tried to warm up, neutralize the shadows. One thing I just did now for the very first time… I put the various adjust layers in to a single “group” (Ctrl-G, Opt-G) and then used the opacity slider to lessen my tweaks, about 70% opacity. Interesting, different way to see the adjustments to the image; rather than turning layers on and off, just move the opacity slider and watch the changes increase/decrease.
Anyway, not sure if this fits your vision or experience, but thought I would put this out there.
Oh, I also cropped from the top a little to remove the lighter triangle in the URC.
Bill, seeing “telephoto” landscapes like this is not always easy, but I like the interplay of light/shadow and cool/warm that ended up with here. From a composition standpoint I like the strong use of verticals especially in the center where shadow transitions to light. I could see another crop here that takes some away from the bottom to go to a more panoramic crop. The really dark patch in the LRC bothers me a little, and a crop or clone to get rid of it might help.
Treatment of color and white balance is very personal and subjective. To my taste, I really like the purple tones in the center, even if that may not be how it looked in reality. The blue shadows in the top half of the image look a bit too saturated to me, and I would back that down a tad. The blue shadows in the bottom half of the image already are less saturated, and look okay to my taste, with possibly the LLC needing a saturation drop if you end up not cropping the bottom. I tend to prefer cooler treatments of images in general, so that is where I am coming from. It will be interesting to see the opinions on this one, I suspect a number of others will want to take this warmer, and mine will be the minority view. This has great light and shadows, it’s certainly worth getting input on, and experimenting with WB here.
Bill, this is a great abstract with the blue shadows and various browns in the sunlit portions. A very well seen, scene. 