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Matthew Kuchta
08-05-2008, 12:02 PM
Longs Peak Sunrise: Chasm Lake

18113

10D, 17-40L, ISO 100
1/125sec, f8.0

Stitch of two images (vertically) in Photoshop.

A reward for a long hike in the dark: Longs Peak reflected in Chasm Lake at sunrise. IMO, the most beautiful place in Rocky Mountain National Park. Hm, sorry for the thumbnail - click for the larger version. Still trying to get comfortable with the forum interface ;)

-matt

Roman Kurywczak
08-05-2008, 06:34 PM
Hi Matthew,
I am very familiar with the area of RMNP as that was my first flight to go backpacking many years ago. This place is very dear to my heart as it was the first time this NJ boy got a glimpse of some real mountains! Yeah.... the appalachians are older.....this is the trip that i fell in love with the west!
In this image.....you may have benefitted from waiting a few more minutes for the shadow line to totally leave the shoreline. Evwn of the light was just hitting the rocks in the FG......that would have been very dramatic....as you did very well in minimizing the plain blue sky. Compositionally you did very well.........you may want to lighten the FG a bit more or carry my Fav........3 stop grad ND. Waiting a bit for the sun..........would have been best. did you catch it with the first light on the peaks??? That would have been very nice also.
As for favorite places in RMNP..........Andrews lake is a very nice short (3 mile) morning hike........but i have a special place for Thunder Lake and Bluebird Lake in the backcountry a bit further out.

Robert Amoruso
08-06-2008, 06:53 AM
Welcome to the forum Matthew,

Well composed image. Though the horizon may be at the center of the image, it works with reflections like this. I agree with Roman, opening up the shadows in the FG will strengthen the image. I downloaded the image and tried a Shadow/Highlight adjustment (PSCS3) for the shadows only. I also added about 20% mid-tone contrast to bring up the flatness of the FG once the shadows were opened up. This left the other areas of the image looking garish so I created a masked and painted out the BG in sunlight. I then painted 50% black on the rocks in the shadows to lessen the affect there.

Looked good but then I tried a Hue/Saturation adjustment and increased saturation to 15%. Again, I masked the same areas as I did for the S/H adjustment. If you have any question, let me know.