Zion and the Virgin River

[Steve Patterson]

I am new here, and just trying a post. I took this a few weeks ago.
http://www.pbase.com/spatterson/image/110920786/original.jpg

[Michael Pancier]

welcome Steve, looks like you got some nice light and sky there of the Watchman. The lower portion of your photo is too dark. An easy fix in photoshop or

[Steve Patterson]

welcome Steve, looks like you got some nice light and sky there of the Watchman. The lower portion of your photo is too dark. An easy fix in photoshop or

Thanks,Michael....the original was actually quite a bit darker. This has been lightened quite a bit already in the lower part.....it was very contrasty when shot. I agree with you, but this was about as far as I could go without it looking overdone.....at least with my PS skills.

[Ed Cordes]

Great first post! I like the wide tonal range, but agree that a bit of Shadow Highlight adjustment could recover some shadow details in the lower portion of the image. The color of the water in the middle of the image is super as is the colors of the BG mountains.

If the S/H tool is too coarse ruining the rest of the image to recover the shadows try creating a screen layer and dodge the lower part of the image.

[John Ippolito]

Steve, I really like the composition here and of course the light on the Watchman. Ed has some good ideas to try and recover some of the foreground detail. It's a tough job photographing the canyons in early and late light with the great range of light.

[Steve Patterson]

Ed and John....thanks so much for the suggestions. I did try to do pretty much what you suggested, but maybe held back a little too much. Here is the original after some work in Camera Raw....should I have lightened the foreground even more?

http://www.pbase.com/spatterson/image/110850623.jpg

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Steve,
Welcome to the forum. If you could, please post the specs as this will help everyone when we evaluate the image. SS, f stop, if split ND was used:D....etc.
This is the perfect time of day to use the grad split ND filter......soft stop one here.....as we don't have a very straight line but by darkening the sky......and then exposing for the FG (Manual of course)......you would have achieved much greater tonal range.
Compositionally very nicely handled and sweet light! I took the image into PS to give you a few ideas but as always......more than one way to skin a cat.....but here goes. I used the lasso tool on your re-post image and selected everything in the shadow areas.....apllied a screen layer to it at 100% opacity. Robert has a tutorial on it at the top of the forum under a sticky of tonal range tweaks. I then did a S/H adjustment at 33% and highlights at 12% (tame the cloud a hair).........slight contrast tweak overall.....watching the clouds.....and then a stronger contrast boost to the shadow area. I did lighten the 2 trees a bit with same screen layer.....even I'm not sure I like it but left it....just wanted to show you that you can work on small areas.....just remember to sufficiently blur the masks.
I always prefer to get it right in the field...you could have used the filter(or 2 stacked) or do an HDR. Both would have been very effective here. Remember, these are just recommendations......just to show possibilities. Let me know your thoughts

[Steve Patterson]

Roman...thank so much for taking the time to play with this. It was my first post here and I did forget the data. 40D 17-40f/4 @ 25 mm 1/200 f/8 iso 320. I did use a cp,but not a ND filter. I took the original (the second photo posted) and used the eliptical tool to grab the forground, then used an adjustment layer to brighten it. I liked the drama between the dark and light here, so didn't brighten the foreground a ton, but from the comments here I should probably redo it and bring it up even more. I thought this had an almost prehistoric look to it (like the old grade B movies) with the dark going into the light. Because the foreground was so dark I took a few photos with much less of it in the image, but found I really liked the river in the composition so tried to work with this version. I will try to get something between your version, which looks too bright to my eye, and mine, which is still dark. Thanks again for the help.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Steve,
Good luck with the tweaks and look forward to the re-post! I agree that somewhere in between will be the way to go. On the screen blend mentioned.....just slide the opacity slider down from 100% to your liking.....makes it easy to see. now that you posted the specs......I may have also opted for getting rid of some of that speed for as much DOF as I could squeeze out.

[David Thomasson]

If the S/H tool is too coarse ruining the rest of the image to recover the shadows try creating a screen layer and dodge the lower part of the image.

Better yet, duplicate the layer, convert it to a smart object, and apply S/H to that. Then invert the mask and paint the S/H back in selectively -- more here, less there as needed.

Beautiful image, not just by the way. Well worth a little fuss to bring out the shadow details.

Animated gif ...

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f164/Peano2/zion.gif

[Rich Ikerd]

Lot of good suggestions on opening up the shadows. Definitely worth the post-processing time to get a better result since it is a very nicely composed image. Another option is to do a single image HDR (using Photomatix if you have that available). Just might give you some other options.

[Thomas Herou]

I like your original version best.It has a wonderful feeling of the landscapes greatness
and some mystique left in the shadows.It's not always necessary to see all the details.
In this picture I think the light is important,and by lightening up the foreground too much
you loose much of the beautiful effect the sunlight has on the cliff.

[Steve Patterson]

Better yet, duplicate the layer, convert it to a smart object, and apply S/H to that. Then invert the mask and paint the S/H back in selectively -- more here, less there as needed.

Beautiful image, not just by the way. Well worth a little fuss to bring out the shadow details.

Animated gif ...

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f164/Peano2/zion.gif

David....that animated gif is so cool. Thanks very much for taking the time to do this. It really is fun looking at the two versions go back and forth like that. It makes it easy to decide which version you prefer.....and after seeing this I am pretty settled on liking the version with the darker fg. I know it is a matter of taste. The more the shadows are removed, the less I like the glow downstream. My "vision" in this shot (that sounds so pompous) was really the amazing glow in the distance, and I guess I feel the dark in the fg helps that feeling. I do like what you did to the lower glowing faces, and think the whole photo looks good....I just prefer the more contrasty version, I guess. Thanks again for taking the time to do this for me. That is what makes this forum fun...different versions, from different people willing to teach other. Thanks.

[Steve Patterson]

I like your original version best.It has a wonderful feeling of the landscapes greatness
and some mystique left in the shadows.It's not always necessary to see all the details.
In this picture I think the light is important,and by lightening up the foreground too much
you loose much of the beautiful effect the sunlight has on the cliff.

Thanks, Thomas...you said pretty much what I feel about this one. I appreciate the comment, and I agree with you. As always, everyone has a little different eye. I am glad you liked it, and thanks for looking.