Fall Color in Bishop Creek Canyon HDR

[Gerald_Gilligan]

I was chasing Fall Color and soft light in the Eastern Sierra's last week in Bishop, California.

This is Bishop Creek Canyon just below Lake Sabrina.

Canon 10D
17 - 40L
f/22
ISO 100 @ 28mm
5 RAW images for this HDR .

All comments and critiques welcome...

Thank you for looking

Jerry

[Bruce Murden]

Jerry, the water and the rocks look great here, and I like the proportions of water, rocks and trees. In this jpg, though, I think the yellows are too saturated or too bright, so the trees blend into a mass of bright yellow in the UR. If you can get some more detail out of those trees, you will improve this lovely image.

[Robert Amoruso]

Gerald,

Bruce is right on in his evaluation. The composition of the falls and their color cast (blue in the shade) works great but work to desaturate the reds, yellows and greens in the trees to bring back their detail. If you used ACR, it can oversaturate reds and yellows pretty easily.

A very lovely scene.

[Gerald_Gilligan]

Bruce, Robert,
I agree with your observations on the saturation, I did not add any here.
I processed this in Photomatix with Tone Compression...it seems to bring out the color. Once again this site helps me see through others eye's.
I have reprocessed it with the detail enhancer.

Jerry

[Robert Amoruso]

WOW Gerald. That is very cool. I love it. There nice work with Photomatix.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Gerald,
While I agree the original was too much saturation..........the repost lost a bit of pop. Somewhere in between would work for me on the Sat.............otherwise....very nicely composed and great use of the slow shutter.

[Joanna Trescott]

Jerry: Really nice photo. I love the location large rock and the smoothness of the water. I agree with Roman that it lost too much of its' pop. My eye keeps going to the upper right where there is a light rock or tree.

[Chris Starbuck]

Gerald,
I took a shot at "recovering the pop" in the foliage, just to see if I could.

I used a Color Range selection to select all the foliage. That also selected some similar colors reflected in the water and rocks, so I just used the lasso tool (with a subtract setting) to remove those areas from the selection, then added a small feather. Next added a curves layer, which turned the selection into a layer mask, and added a moderate S-curve to the foliage. What do you think?
Chris

[Gerald_Gilligan]

Chris,
This is a definite improvement and brought back some contrast and color. I have been waiting for someone to work their PS magic.
I 'm not as well versed in PS but will try your approach.
sI have reworked this image going back to the RAW converter and trying to bring out some definition in the background by slightly increasing contrast and saturation before converting to Tiff, and only combining three images for a HDR. The saturation increased but is still more intense than your fix.
Thanks again for your version...

Joanna, would you suggest a crop or is there another technique that could be used to minimize that area?

I welcome any other advice or technique which could further improve this image...

Jerry

[Mike Lentz]

The last re-work is the best for my eyes. Nice image!

[Joanna Trescott]

Jerry: The repost is really nice. I guess it is just me, but I might burn it a tad. I don't think I would crop -- your comp is great.