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Michael Lloyd
12-17-2012, 10:30 PM
I spent some time at Mese Verde NP earlier this year. The ruin in this image is called Cliff Palace.

EOS 1DsMK3 manual
TS-E 24mm f3.5L II on a tripod

ISO 100
1/125 @f8
B&W conversion with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

If you've never heard the sound of thunder echoing through the canyons of Mesa Verde you are missing an amazing sound...

http://wildlightimagingstudio.com/img/s2/v58/p1205219946-4.jpg


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Don Railton
12-18-2012, 11:36 PM
Hi Michael.

Sorry to say it but this image is not doing a lot for me...It looks to be a spectacular location but the image looks dead to me... but maybe that's what you wanted considering subject...? I think I feel like this because the foreground trees blend together and lack impact while the dwellings look overly bright and only show basic detail...Other than that I am not sure really why its lacks the punch we all hope for..

I now I would probably like the colour version better, maybe that's my problem...!

DON

John Chardine
12-20-2012, 10:43 AM
Michael- I wonder if there is a way to lift and separate the tones to get more definition between the cliff and trees. Perhaps playing with the B/W conversion and the green channel may help. L.A.B. processing would work too because it would be easy to separate the greens in the A channel. I am not sure about the peak-a-boo tree on the right side. I do like the curved flow from left to right.

Roman Kurywczak
12-20-2012, 10:44 AM
Hey Michael,
Pretty amazing you got it without people! The storm must have been something too! I think you could tweak this more on the trees so that they separate a bit more. I do like the curve of your comp so a bit more tonal tweaking should do the trick.

Roger Clark
12-20-2012, 11:19 AM
Hi Michael,

I really like this image. I see plenty of separation of the trees on my calibrated monitor, though I can envision some having problems with the trees at the right end of the palace (just below and right of center). I would crop out the tree branches on the right edge as there is not enough of the tree to be a frame--it just looks like protruding branches to me.

Roger

Robert Amoruso
12-20-2012, 02:53 PM
I would agree with Roman's comments above and agree on loosing the protruding tree on the right.

Jerry van Dijk
12-28-2012, 04:46 PM
Hi Michael, I like how the curve of the rock leads the eye trough the image and towards those ominous clouds. I think the image could gain from a more contrasty look. It would emphasize the structures in the rock, trees and clouds. I would crop from the right to get rid of the protruding tree.

Morkel Erasmus
12-30-2012, 05:16 PM
Hey Michael
I like this and think it would be better without the RHS tree. You got some nice tonal range and drama in the conversion.

Michael Lloyd
01-01-2013, 10:11 AM
Thanks everyone. If ever there was a New Years resolution to be made this is it- I resolve to crop my photos before I post them.

I completely agree with the crop suggestions. Historically I have viewed cropping as so subjective that, most of the time, I post the full frame image and let everyone suggest crops as they see fit. The problem with doing that, as I see it, is that by not cropping the image I leave my opinion out of the pool of opinions. If nothing else I lose the opportunity to fine tune my cropping skills. Thanks for everyone's feedback. It's invaluable.

Roman- One of my pet peeves about web posts vs print is that so much is lost during the scrambling and unscrambling of electrons that goes one when we drop the image size to 800 px on the long side, reduce to 72 ppi, post an image to a hosting site, and then link to it on another site. Case in point- I have this image without people, but in this image, there are two people down at the very end of the ruin, a ranger and a fellow photographer / workshop attendee. I left them there for a sense of scale. Another point- I typically use a very contrasty conversion workflow and that has been subdued quite a bit in this image. I almost forgot- I was there with a retired professor of archeology. Wetherill Mesa was closed yet we spent an entire day there, with a ranger of course. We had to contend with crowds in other places but the rangers coordinated our group with the tour groups so in most places we had an unlimited amount of time to shoot.

I punched up the contrast and sharpening to see if that would help bring the image out a little better. Thanks for all of your comments. Here's the result:

http://wildlightimagingstudio.com/img/s3/v8/p1359101932-4.jpg