October Road, Upstate NY

[Melissa Groo]

Canon 5d Mark II
Canon EF 24-105mm, taken at 67mm
ISO 100
1/20 sec
f/13
Handheld

I drive around with my camera in my lap lately. Now that the birds are gone, landscapes have become my passion. Here in deep country in upstate NY the leaves are just past their peak and many have fallen to the ground. But there are still views like this...
I did tone mapping in Photomatix, and some sharpening in CS3. Please feel free to post any comments or critiques. Thanks for looking.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Melissa,
I've spent the last month chasing the leaves and they are just coming into peak here in NJ......so still having fun! You placed the road well in the frame and the tonemapping looks good. I am not thrilled with the man made elements but the biggest issue for me is the lack of a strong focal point......even with the great colors my eye isn't drawn to them strongly and keeps going back to the telephone pole. Perhpas if you darken the sky and bring out more of the clouds?.....might be tough but perhaps a multiplied layer.....tweaking the opacity? Not sure if that will do it but worth exploring to see if that gets more of an impact.

[Melissa Groo]

Thanks for your comments, Roman. I splurged on Viveza 2 the other day so quickly tried that on the sky. Do you like this any better?

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Hi Melissa,

I want to drive down that road! To me, the subject is the scene, road and colorful trees. Even though there's direct light, I still get a soft feeling from this. I mean that in a good way.

[Judy Howle]

That's a lovely scene Melissa! I think the sky does look better in the re-post.

[Nick Palmieri]

Very nice scene and nice job using the Viveza to bring out the sky a bit. Using a polarizing filter may have strengthened the sky in camera and tends to makes those beautiful colors pop a bit more. I may also consider cropping out the darker trees on the left of the image. TFS. What part of NY is this?

[Melissa Groo]

Thank you all for your comments. Nick, this is Ithaca, NY. "Centrally isolated" about an hour southwest of Syracuse.

[Robert Amoruso]

Melissa,

Here is a repost with my technique (really not mine but I recommend it a lot around here :)) that Roman mentioned.

In the channels palette, CRTL-Click on the RGB layer to create selection of highlights.
In the layers palette, create BG copy and then create a mask using the selection. Just click on the ADD VECTOR MASK at the bottom of the palette. This creates a grayscale mask of the selection.
ON this BG layer, change blending mode to Multiple and then adjust opacity (65% in my post).

I find the colors much more bold now w/o over saturating.

BTW: I get color skewing on the uploads so that may throw some stuff off but give it a try.

[Melissa Groo]

Robert, thanks a lot for this. I will try that soon when I have time. The color looks a bit yellowy greeny here, but that must be the upload problem. I'll check it out. Thanks again for the tip!

[Dennis "Curly" Buchner]

Very nice but not a fan of the telephone pole