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Gerald_Gilligan
02-06-2010, 02:02 AM
Gates of The Valley Winter Sunrise

Four Storms passed over much of California which caused Yosemite to close on Friday January 22 after the last storm left heavy snow between 12 to 18 inches on trees causing them to bend and break. Roads were closed all day while I waited outside not completely aware of all of the damage. Crews worked throughout the day clearing trees and snow only to find more tree's falling down on previously cleared roads.

Later in the day a caravan of cars left the valley to El Portal allowing visitors and employee's to leave and another was lead back into the park with only residence and employee's.

I was finally able to enter after 5:00 pm...


This sunrise was worth the long wait from the prior day.

Taken on 1.23.2010 at 7:08 am 5D MK II 17-40L f16 two exposures 1/4 second and 1/10 second at 22mm ISO 200 RAW Cropped Post Processing in Photoshop to include manually combining two exposures with layer masks to realize the full dynamic range of this scene.

All Comments are encouraged and welcome...

Jerry

Dave Blinder
02-06-2010, 09:31 AM
Great job with the exposures Jerry, I especially like the tones in the clouds. Great DOF too.

Dave Mills
02-06-2010, 12:24 PM
Hi Jerry, your hard work really paid off here. I have a friend that holds workshops in Yosemite every year and this is one of his favorite locations. You were fortunate to get a nice snowfall and captured it well. Good exposure with detail in the snow along with using the rocks as a foreground. What really makes the image a bit unique is the beautiful colored water. That along with a softly colored interesting sky. Very well handled!

Anita Rakestraw
02-06-2010, 07:28 PM
Gerald, this is a gorgeous landscape, IMO. Love the color palette, perspective, composition, clouds, snow: all kinds of things to like here! Shot very well. I'm far from an expert on landscapes, so may be way off in suggesting a CW rotation to straighten the groundline....?

Morkel Erasmus
02-07-2010, 02:04 PM
nice scene and love the colour tones. I agree on a slight rotation CCW as the main horizon-creator is the ground in the midground.

Indranil Sircar
02-07-2010, 02:09 PM
Absolutely gorgeous composition, Jerry. You are lucky to be there right after the storm! The morning sky is the one of the best I have seen. I do think a small ccw rotation would help the image better. I would go for a bit more contrast on the sky. Another alternative would be to use a pano crop. TFS.

btw, was chain control in effect in the park when you were there in the morning?

Markus Jais
02-07-2010, 04:41 PM
A wonderful shot. Great exposure and beautiful composition. I especially like the warm colors in the water.

Markus

Gerald_Gilligan
02-09-2010, 11:41 AM
Thank you all for your kind comments and critiques.
Dave, This is one of those iconic locations, and favorite spot for a lot of folks, sometimes it is tripod to tripod a few hours before sunset and parking can be a problem on the weekends. There are more crowds than from years past...

Anita, Morkel, I went back and looked at each of your suggestions...In Photoshop I used the ruler tool and depending on where you start and finish, the results are a bit confusing, I could rotate this image slightly CCW or even slightly CW. I realized that the horizon is not as easily defined in this image as the meadow behind the first set of shrubs is not level and the water line is not clearly defined with the snow covered rocks. I have also researched barrel distortion and I'm not sure of this is the issue. I systematically level my camera prior to composing an image...so I am wondering if the horizon is a function of the camera lens combo (and)or the angle of where I made this image? I guess that in this case you would "level to taste".

Indranil, I agree with you on the sky, I did add a some saturation trying to balance the overall color from the clouds to the color in the water, from what I remember, the sky was a little redder ( is that a word?) than presented and I have another image that is one stop darker that would bring out some of the darker red tones, but I decided that the image might look unnatural if I over emphasized the sky, What do you think? Should the sky match the reflection in the water? There was chain control (R2) from the entrance at 120 all the way into to the park and all through out the day. I have a four wheel drive with snow tires and it really makes it easier to get around with out hassling with chains.

One of my own critiques is that this image does not seem as sharp on my screen...Does anyone have any advice on sharpening a jpeg for the web? The 13x19 print that I made from a large tiff file looks sharper and the snow is whiter....

Jerry

Dan Wolin
02-09-2010, 07:13 PM
Jerry, first off a very nice image - I have never been there but would love to some day. In regards to sharpening it kind of depends on the camera. My MKII required a lot more sharpening than my MKIII. I usually start out with about 135-150 for the sharpening and .2-.3 for the radius and 0 for the threshold. Hope that helps.