Mt. Shasta Lavender Farm

[John Platt]

We got there a week too early, no blooms, 104 degrees, no clouds and smoke from a nearby fire in the air. I had a big glass of lemonade and waited for evening, it was still better than staying home watching T.V.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4077/4743309637_39f05695f0_b.jpg

This is a 4 shot Pano shot in RAW and stitched in CS5.

Nikon D700
14-24mm Nikon Lens
Tripod
manual focus, matrix metered manual -1.3 ev
f22
1/125

Slight bump in vibrance and curves, cropped. HDR CS5 adjustment layer of mountain and sky w/foreground masked.

JP

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hi John

I like your composition and colours and the stitching was done very well. The contrast of lines from L to R (layers) and F to B (lavender groves) work extremely well to add to the tension in the image.

Only nit from me is the haloing you picked up on almost the entire horizon line. Easy to fix but you have to be very careful with your levels/curves adjustments in this area.

[Robert Amoruso]

John,

I agree with Morkel. Though you do have haloing artifacts from the processing, the somewhat surreal look is enhanced by them.

[Kobus Tollig]

Great comp and i like the Pano. Great image you have here well done. Agree with Morkel on the halos

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey John,
Haloing mentioned....very, strong comp with great lines and the stitch looks fantastic too! Tweak the PP'ing and you've got yourself a real winer that was worth the sweat!

[Dave Mills]

Hi John, the comp works well as a pano. Strong leading lines taking the eye out to an interesting backround. The sky does look a bit surreal with noted halo. I like the tree anchoring the right side but noticed the tip of the tree is light and seems to have taken the backround adjustment.
Too bad you were a bit early and didn't catch the bloom. Interesting image!

[John Platt]

Thanks to everyone for the comments, the halo is an adjustment in CS5 and I selected what I thought looked "artsy" during the adjustment. Somethimes (OK, a lot) I get carried away with what I can do in Photoshop. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

I need to remember that.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

JP