Nipple Bench Badlands

[Douglas Bolt]

Canon 5DM1, Sigma 12-14@14, f16, 1/100, ISO 200. PP: NIK dfine, SEP, curves to enhance the leading dark lines. Cropped to 12x16 from to fit mat.

Not sure about the foreground rock. Maybe it would be better to make a horizontal above the front rock.

[Don Nelson]

Doug
Nicely seen and imaged. Too often we see images with just a cliff or pile of stone without the photographer using the foreground. You've chosen the appropriate focal length as well to achieve this effect.

I definitely would not remove the foreground rock. If anything, I would have wished to be just a little lower to emphasize the rock. IF you'd been using a view camera, you would have tilted the back to make the foreground rock even larger (one of the tricks those of us that us view cameras do often. Ansel did it sometimes. Weston did it often. Dykinga (when he used view camera) seems to have done it always...changing the foreground size in relation to the background.

Two things I note - first, did you apply the curves to the sky when you enhanced the leading lines? If so, give it a shot while masking the sky out so curves are not applied on the clouds. They just seem way too contrasty for me, and I'd like to see more tonality in the ones in the extreme upper right and behind the mesa on the left. IF you have already masked that curve to prevent that, give a shot at duplicating the layer and see if you can use linear burn (with masking) to give a little more tonality in the clouds.

Second item - you have a white band, now a pixel wide along the edge of the mesa and sky. I can't tell without the color image whether you have some chromatic aberration along that point (and its real common with wide angle lenses, but easy to get rid of). It commonly appears on such a knife edge of rock with blue sky behind. If you inspect your color image you might find some narrow band of color there....often red. IF not, then its either a sharpening artifact or the edge of a mask that wasn't precise (perhaps burning the sky or changing the color of the rock??? In any event its really hard to judge without seeing the color image pre-shrink to the image size required by this forum. >>> this is real common with wide angle lenses - no matter how expensive -- as it is difficult to get the different colors to focus precisely on the same plane. this knife edge effect of rock against the blue sky is where I look for this in my images.....

Nice one!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Douglas,
I too would leave the FG rock and maybe a hair more room on bottom if you have it. For me, the problem is in the MG......I want a bit more separation in the rocks there from the cliff. A bit more tweaking should help that. All in all a nice comp and a few minor adjustments will make this even stronger.

[Morkel Erasmus]

I like the FG rock, Douglas. All in all good composition and use of textures and lines.
Don's hit so many nails right on the head with this critique. I personally love going for an IR feel (making the blue sky dark like this) in my monochrome conversions so I like that.
I can't help but wonder what does the colour version actually look like?

[Douglas Bolt]

Don,

Point 1, I pulled the curve down to darken the entire image, then inverted the mask, and, with a soft white brush, painted back in the leading lines to taste. The sky was all due to SEP. I'll try the linear burn on the sky. I did darken the very top of the tallest rock a bit to give a little more separation between the rock and the sky.

Point 2. I don't see any obvious chromatic aberration in the color version our of ACR (the attached color ver is unmolested), so the band is probably due to PP. I frequently see a white band show up even before any sharpening is applied. Not sure why, but I sure would like to learn how to avoid or fix it.

From the looks of the sky in the color ver, I must have also used a Cir-Pol filter for the shot.

[Douglas Bolt]

Hey Douglas,
I too would leave the FG rock and maybe a hair more room on bottom if you have it. For me, the problem is in the MG......I want a bit more separation in the rocks there from the cliff. A bit more tweaking should help that. All in all a nice comp and a few minor adjustments will make this even stronger.

Thanks, Roman.
First, I'm not sure what you mean by MG .

Second, I'm sorry I'll miss you at the Manassas Expo. I'll be somewhere in southern Africa at the time. Actually, this image is one of several I've submitted as a member of one of he supporting camera clubs. I would have preferred the image be 12x18, rather than 12x16, but that was the size of the presupplied matting. But, the crop was from the top, so there is no more image available at the bottom.

Regarding

[Douglas Bolt]

Thanks Morkel,

The RP is the FF image without adjustments. Before converting with SEP, contrast, clarity, vibrance, and black/white points were adjusted.

[Douglas Bolt]

IF you have already masked that curve to prevent that, give a shot at duplicating the layer and see if you can use linear burn (with masking) to give a little more tonality in the clouds.
Nice one!

Don,

I tried the linear burn blend mode on the masked sky at about 30% opacity. It really improved the detail in the white clouds. I can't believe that I thought it made the dark sky a bit too dark, which makes me think I don't need to get so aggressive with SEP, which I blame for creating noise and artifacts. My question is whether you would suggest applying the Linear Burn to the color version before conversion or afterwards?

[Roman Kurywczak]

Thanks, Roman.
First, I'm not sure what you mean by MG .

Second, I'm sorry I'll miss you at the Manassas Expo. I'll be somewhere in southern Africa at the time. Actually, this image is one of several I've submitted as a member of one of he supporting camera clubs. I would have preferred the image be 12x18, rather than 12x16, but that was the size of the presupplied matting. But, the crop was from the top, so there is no more image available at the bottom.

Regarding

Middle Ground=MG. A bit more separation there in the B&W....color has more.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Doug.
I took the liberty of working with your last colour post. I did two versions.
First up - colour.
Tried not to go overboard with saturation and tone...but did a very quick job.
Sky could go a little brighter, I think! :Whoa!:

WDYT?

[Morkel Erasmus]

Second version: monochrome (based on your last colour post).

I did a double-layer in Silver Efex. First layer - red filter (infra-red feel) for the sky and top cliffs.
Second layer - green filter for the FG and midground rocks and cracks.
I then blended the two using a gradient mask and some selective painting through the mask.
Then did some expansive dodging and burning in PS...
The end goal was to get good tonal separation in all the key areas of interest, while retaining some mood and feel.

WDYT?

[Douglas Bolt]

Well balanced. I like the way the red/orange rocks in the center of the image are separated from the gray gravel. This does not look way different than my image before CEP and SEP. I certainly need to reduce the amount of Detail Extraction and Tonal Contrast. The saying, "Kid with a new toy" comes to mind.

Thanks for your time. I appreciate it.

[Douglas Bolt]

Second version: monochrome (based on your last colour post).

I did a double-layer in Silver Efex. First layer - red filter (infra-red feel) for the sky and top cliffs.
Second layer - green filter for the FG and midground rocks and cracks.
I then blended the two using a gradient mask and some selective painting through the mask.
Then did some expansive dodging and burning in PS...
The end goal was to get good tonal separation in all the key areas of interest, while retaining some mood and feel.

WDYT?

Thanks again Morkel.

I've never tried double layers for SEP. I assume you are not making the color/background layer a smart object. At least I know how to add a mask to a SEP layer if it is not part of a smart object. I tinkered a bit with your approach before this post. Thanks. I like it. I like being able to mask a SEP layer, rather than depending upon control points. With my PC, it is much faster to make a make a mask.

I'm heading your way tomorrow. I'll be in Jo'burg Thur. Visiting Dewald Swanepoel et al before on to Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe on Sunday.