Wildfire Aftermath

[gDan52 (Gary Danis)]

Forest scenes are a challenge for me, even scenes of wildfire destruction. I was planning to do a story on wildfire destruction and regrowth. The image was to me a stark image of the effects of wildfire. What do you see in this image?

Raw File

_DSC6349.dng (48 MB)

You may only download this file to demonstrate how you would process the image. The file is Copyright of the photographer, and you must delete the raw file when you are done. Please post a jpg of what you created, explain what you did, and why you did it.

My Edit

[Lon_Overacker]

Hi Gary,

I’ve accepted the challenge! And I would say this isn’t really about a processing challenge, but an interpretation challenge. In other words, I wasn’t there and don’t have the same emotional connection to the scene, so my “interpretation” might not - and probably isn’t, the same as yours.

First, I really like the scene and agree with your choice of the word “stark”. There is great starkness and contrasts here. Then my impression alters in that sure, it’s clear there was a fire and that fire is what defines this landscape. However, the starkness of the trees don’t really show me “burnt” trees - at least recently. I see this more of a ghost forest from fires past, but many generations ago. I say this because I just got back from camping in the Sierra and driving through the remnants of a major fire just 2 years ago and seeing the destruction and condition of the forest - blackened trunks, half-burned trees, etc. etc. I think it’s the char that is my vision of a forest fire. Now that doesn’t change the reality of your image - just my interpretation.

Next - the drama in the sky. Next to the stark contrast in the trees, I was drawn to the drama in the sky and that rain squall. In fact, my processing was driven by trying to emphasize the rain storm. With that squall, I think of lightning - a sure fire starter. That’s what I see in this scene.

I’ll comment too that I think the blurring of the bg trees is effective. You are probably familiar with the “miniaturization” of photographs using blurring and out of focus areas to make the foreground area of a photograph stand out - and this works very well helping the maing trees stand out (such great character these old snags!)

I’ll include a copy of my stack in PS. First layer is just duplicated so I could go back and forth to Camera Raw (Smart object layer). Oh, and in ACR, I cropped to remove the one tree really close to the edge, and converted to B&W using one of the presets, increased blue, decreased yellow and green to darken the land and vegetation. Next layer, added a vignette. The top 2 layers to increase contrast; first with a levels layer globally, then the top layer a brightness/contrast layer that I masked and painted additional contrast mostly around the rain squall.

I’m no expert in b&w processing, that’s for sure. But again, the main driver for me was trying to accentuate the storm - I think thereby making a stretch connection between storm/rain/lightning - and the devastation, aftermath of forest fires.

Thanks for posting and letting us try our hand at processing your image.

Lon

[gDan52 (Gary Danis)]

Lon, I do appreciate that you took time to take a look at a non typical image for this challenge, there were no others who took the challenge. I do like what you have done on the images, particularly your treatments of the subject dead trees ; a bit of a different perspective and isn’t that what this is all about. Thank you for your insight and commentary. Cheers.

[David_Bostock]

Hello Gary,

Here’s another take at a B&W version. I use Capture One for my processing so while I’ll explain what I did, it may not be as meaningful as @Lon_Overacker’s description using ACR and Photoshop.

First, I took the crop ideas from both you and Lon (cropped both sides). It seemed to simplify the image and draw the eye towards the middle back trees and the coming rain.
Obviously, I converted to B&W using the standard C1 B&W Tool. Then some minor adjustments to exposure, contrast highlights, etc…

Capture One has a nice feature called style brushes. With them you can brush in just about any adjustment you want. And you can put them on separate layers so you can adjust opacity if desired.

I brushed the sky with a Deep Sky adjustment to bring out the drama in the clouds. I also brushed in a bit of clarity and structure in the squall clouds near the center.

I created a gradual mask layer for the foreground and brightened it up some.

Then I did some selective dodging and burning, healing a couple of minor spots, and finally added just a touch of reverse clarity to those burnt trees in the middle background.

Here’s the result:

I also played around with a color version…I hesitate to post it but here goes. I wanted to accentuate the contrast between the burnt trees and the new growth coming up around them. So, after doing several normal tweaks to exposure, contrast, etc, I created a foreground gradient to tweak the greens. I also desaturated the trees, as they had some color in them. I felt it would be more striking to have them as uncolored as possible. I also applied that same deep sky brush to the sky.

Here’s the color version:

Thanks for letting us play with your image, Gary. Lots of fun.

Cheers,
David

[Michael_Thornton]

My gosh, you folks are so talented! NPN is such a great forum, and I’m so glad to be able to share with you all – and more importantly, to learn from everybody! – Michael

[Tom_Nevesely]

Here’s my take on this scene. I ended up taking it in a very similar direction as the others. It wasn’t planned and I had originally wanted to leave it in colour but I couldn’t get the colour to work for me.
Anyways…

In Lightroom:

• I worked with the Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks and cropped the image to a 4x5 aspect ratio. Then I moved the image into Photoshop.

In Photoshop:

• The first thing I did here was to clone out some of the branches that were coming into the frame on the right side from the tree I cropped out in the previous step.
• Next I used a Lights luminosity mask to select the very bright areas on the image and brought them down using a levels adjustment.
• Then, using another levels adjustment I darkened the entire image and then with a mask and a black brush painted over the two dominant trees on the right side to bring back (more or less) their original brightness.
• Next, using the “Paint Contrast” tool in the TK9 panel I added some contrast to the two dominant trees on the right as well as to the flat rocks in the bottom left.
• And finally to finish off, I added a vignette.