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Jay Gould
07-08-2013, 10:09 AM
This was the opener at 8:11pm. When the light kissed the midground hills I was stoked!

Oly EM-5; Pana 12-35@53; 5-images@f/11; ISO 200 - See more at: http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=234549#sthash.ie272RCJ.dpuf

Jerry van Dijk
07-08-2013, 01:39 PM
Hi Jay, I see you're having fun with your new camera! This is a very pleasing image of a fantastic landscape. I like the compositional division in layers (rolling green hills, misty hills, moutain, sky) and that the first hill provides a nice diagonal through the image, which juxtaposes with the more or less horizontal horizon. I'd consider cropping from the top to just below the dark cloud in the UR corner, but I also like it as presented. Very well done!

Don Railton
07-09-2013, 05:31 AM
Hi Jay, good to see you back.. I am using a junky laptop at the moment and I cannot get the whole image displayed at once but I very much enjoy seeing what I can. I Love the rolling green with the contrasting paths/ pattern and the pastel sky... My only suggestion for improvement would be to attempt to put a little more defination/cut through the haze at the distant hills using a bit of local contrast enhancement.. I wont comment on crop alternatives given my viewing issues. I am guessing you are quite satisfied with your new gear??

DON

Jay Gould
07-09-2013, 09:12 AM
Hi you two!! :wave:

Love the image as is; would not change anything! :bg3:

Don, loving the Olympus however I have no loyalties. If Sony fixed some of the problems important to me in the next generation Nex-7 I would make a move: http://www.stuckincustoms.com/2013/07/04/sony-nex-review-nikon-vs/

Thanks for taking the time to comment. Cheers,

Andrew McLachlan
07-09-2013, 07:33 PM
Hi Jay, great to see you back posting again. I would leave the image as is. Love the colors in the sky and the crop....for me it is the diagonal placement of the crop sprayer tracks that make the image work so well. Nice one!

James Fuller
07-11-2013, 10:14 PM
Nice image Jay. I really like the leading lines, rolling hills, and the sunset with light peeking through onto the hills!

Anette Mossbacher
07-12-2013, 01:04 PM
Hi Jay,
great image. Love the green hills with the lines. Ver nice done.

Ciao
Anette

John Chardine
07-12-2013, 10:09 PM
I have to say Jay- I love parts of this image and I don't like other parts. The part I like is the rolling green- superb. The part I don't like is what's above that. I have never seen a sky like that. Partly it involves the HDR effect you have achieved by whatever means, but also the colours are just unreal. I don't think you were trying to achieve something out of the box, but for it's very OOTB.

Jay Gould
07-19-2013, 07:10 PM
I have to say Jay- I love parts of this image and I don't like other parts. The part I like is the rolling green- superb. The part I don't like is what's above that. I have never seen a sky like that. Partly it involves the HDR effect you have achieved by whatever means, but also the colours are just unreal. I don't think you were trying to achieve something out of the box, but for it's very OOTB.


Hi John,

You had to be there!

Jay Gould
07-19-2013, 07:11 PM
Announcement: It gives me great pleasure to announce to all of my friends and followers that Julie Johnson Pauletto of Knoxville, Tennessee, has purchased my image Palouse Sunset 1 and the copyright thereto. In the event that you wish to purchase a print or otherwise make use of this image please contact Julie (juliejohnson.pauletto@facebook.com). Thank you Julie; you honor me!

John Chardine
07-20-2013, 06:50 PM
Hi John,

You had to be there!

I would like to visit sometime. I hear the wines are excellent in portions of the region.

So Jay, sorry and with respect, but I still don't believe you. No matter, you were there and I wasn't. I will simply say that oversaturation is an elephant in the room of landscape photography and unless people start pointing out the elephant, nothing with change.

Jay Gould
07-20-2013, 09:37 PM
I would like to visit sometime. I hear the wines are excellent in portions of the region.

So Jay, sorry and with respect, but I still don't believe you. No matter, you were there and I wasn't. I will simply say that oversaturation is an elephant in the room of landscape photography and unless people start pointing out the elephant, nothing with change.

John, what is the definition of over saturation?

When we ETTR we wind up with a very washed out image and then we process the image to either our recollection of the scene at the time, or we process the image to the point that we like the image.

Isn't saturation a subjective issue?

You don't like it; others do.

What more is there?

Colors - hot saturated colors that are loved by Latin Americans are often disliked by Europeans; neither are right and neither are wrong.

Your view of landscape photography is only right for you and those that 100% follow your view.

In this case we can agree to disagree.

John Chardine
07-21-2013, 09:47 AM
Hi Jay- I detect a hint of niggle in your post so Jay, please understand I am not on the attack or anything like that. I have occasionally made a comment about saturation in other Landscape posts here, and I'm sure it comes up from time to time. I am not focussing on your beautiful image per se.

Saturation is a measurable attribute (see the Wiki article on Colorfulness here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorfulness) so in theory you should be able to measure saturation in the field and attempt to duplicate this in your image. This sounds impractical but various colour cards like the one here:

(http://xritephoto.com/ph_product_overview.aspx?ID=1192

allow a colour-managed workflow from pressing the shutter button to final product. Admittedly, these colour cards are mainly used in studio settings.

So, saturation is objective not subjective, but of course one can consider it a subjective attribute and make it whatever you want. As you imply, all those sliders in Adobe Camera Raw give you total freedom to adjust your image either to an objective target, or like you say, to your "recollection of the scene" or "to a point that we like the image".

These targets often overlap- someone's recollection of a scene may be close to the objective target, however, I think what I am saying is that in landscape photography, "the point that we like the image" is too often pushed beyond the objective target, or beyond our recollection, to a condition where the colours are more saturated than the objective standard. This is what I would call over-saturated.

My main "beef" with this approach to colour is that over-saturated landscape images are usually presented as if that was what the photographer saw. You might plan for months to photograph some incredible scene in just the right light, or take the easy approach and run your vibrance and saturation sliders to the right! I have absolutely no problem with any out-of-the-box rendition of an image, so long as the image is presented as such and not as an accurate representation of the scene.

Jay Gould
07-21-2013, 10:59 AM
John, we are now on the same wave length!

I am familiar with the ColorChecker; do not have it and have thought about it. To me the problem with its use is in dynamic situations as compared to static situations. When shooting a sunrise/sunset the light is rapidly changing and I am not going to take the time before each set of brackets to shoot a single frame with the the color checker when my camera is set to bracket mode; nor am I going to waste the time with a CC bracket before each capture.

At the end of the day, my images represent "Nature Interpreted" by me and it doesn't really matter to me if it is not objectively saturated. If you go through my website this is a tame pastel image compared to many of my sunrises and sunsets. My clients - I don't have many - love the hot saturated look.

As I indicated in the intro - this was the opener - the sky went nuclear that night.

Horses for course.

Really appreciate that you took the time to explain where you were coming from.

Also, really sorry that the Landscape Forum which used to be so active is hardly visited/comment in even when you take the time to post an image. Some days no images are posted; this Forum is so slow that apparently it has been combined with Cityscapes and Travel.

My image as been up for days, 170 members took the time to open; there are 12 comments - mostly by you and me.

While it "ain't all about birds" it sure ain't about landscapes any more. :e3

Cheers Mate

Morkel Erasmus
07-25-2013, 06:46 AM
Jay, love this shot. Sorry for the delay in response, I was plonking along the forests of the Zambezi valley in search of some big game...:e3
I too rue the fact that there's not as much activity on this forum as there used to be - but active discussions on images like this will do a lot to improve that. I would also appreciate you posting some more of your recent work as I am keen to see how your new setup is working out.

On the image - love the image design. Love the look & feel. I do see what John was initially hinting at and my first look at the image made me think that the midground is too luminous. It may be how the light played out, but I would be tempted to add some midtone contrast to the midground and perhaps also increase the blacks just a smidgeon?