Last of the Daylight - Vancouver Island, Western Canada

[Steve Smith]

149612

Vancouver Island, Western Canada. A December shot looking West, with slight fog hanging in the near and middle distance tree crowns. Snow on the side-hills above the ragged cloud. The water is the saltchuck. The two black holes in the near tree canopy are dark spots below the conifers standing behind a large Arbutus (Madrone) tree. Canon 70D, EF 70-200mm lens at 145mm; 1/100; F13; ISO 400.

[Don Railton]

Hi Steve. I like the composition, especially the fg (is it a lake?) edge, although I would have added a slither more water below. The image is a little dark but that along with the cloud adds a moody feel that suits the foggy conditions. There is a big dust bunny on the left hand edge mid screen and there is also a quite visible masking edge above and in the cloud on the LHS. Have a look at the sticky at the top of this forum that references Tony Kypers? (might have the spelling wrong here) work on Luminosity masking. Explains masking of different areas (based on luminosity) without creating edges. Essential landscape reading I think. Finally I think the colours above and below that cloud layer have a bit of a blue cast..

regards

DON

[Don Railton]

opps, Tonys work is not there but google knows where it is..

[Steve Smith]

Hi Don,

The water is the ocean (saltchuck in Canajun). I see the dust bunny (woofie in our house) - gosh darn. The visible masking happened when I was making the side hills above the cloud blue. The full frame has more ocean at the bottom but I cropped it so that the rock foreshore started in the corner of the image - I like lines that start at or near a corner. This image was a rescue project for a very dark original shot. I will look for Tony Kypers essay on luminosity masking without edges. Thanks.

Steve

[Diane Miller]

Overall a great scene, worthy of some work. I'd leave more water at the bottom -- it feels very crowded there -- and the "horizon" of the water line isn't horizontal. There is a very flat area of pink in the upper right, and I'd give the trees more contrast and tame the highlights in the sky. A little crop from the top would help there.

Would love to see this one evolve.

[Steve Smith]

149712

Hi Diane,

I worked on the tone mapping some more, got rid of the dust bunny and straightened the far shoreline. A different look.

Steve Smith

[Diane Miller]

Lots of options with this kind of image. You've made some fixes here but I liked the misty feel in the trees in the first.

There's no embedded profile in either, which will give people with some browsers and monitors very wrong colors.

[Andrew McLachlan]

I like the comp but do think the image is suffering from the under-exposure of the original capture that you mentioned...I have begun to play around with the Tony Kuyper masking and highly recommend his latest offering the TK-Panel.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Lots said already Steve, I too like the misty feel of the original and I like the layering and mood here.
Some careful work on the RAW file can provide lots of options on this one, as Diane said.

[Steve Smith]

Hi Andrew,

Yes I too have been playing with luminosity masking - used it in the last version. As Morkel said I should probably go back to the RAW image and try improving the original image. Right now I feel guilty for having dragged the image into the digital darkroom and mutilated its pixels - so I'll give the poor things a rest.

Steve Smith