The Matterhorn Sunrise

[Robin Prange]

I have been to Zermatt, Switzerland at least 15 times over the years and have photos of the Matterhorn from every angle. I got up very early at 4:30 am to see what the conditions were this particular day and to my surprise the conditions were different than any other time that I have been there. This photo stands out to me over the other 100's of photos that I have of my favorite mountain. It will be interesting to see what others think. Your critique will be greatly appreciated! Canon EOS- 70-200 2.8- Provia- ISO 100- f8- 2-3sec- tripod
Robin

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Hello Robin,

This was a fabulous opportunity to photograph your mountain! The excitement here is high, but the image quality is somewhat low. Perhaps the light in this scene exceeded the range of your film, or the scan was a problem. Still, an inspiring mountain.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Wow, you've got some lovely vibrant colours out there. Umpteen times that I've been to Zermatt, I've returned without making images due to bad light / too plain / bad weather.
This is indeed a sweet image. The image looks a bit soft to me and probably couple of patches look too bright but I must say that I'm currently viewing on my uncalibrated office monitor.
Matterhorn is one of my favourite peaks as well.

Thanks for sharing this image.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Robin, The early light at places like this can indeed be magical. Good detail in the clouds and the mountain with just enough sky to include the top of the cloud. I know the colors can be widely varied with this type of light so I won't make a judgement on the color saturation.
I would take off about a third of the dark area on the bottom...

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Robin,

I don't remember seeing a post from you before in this forum.....so welcome!!!

A little late but here goes.......I think everyone above brought up some great points. I agree with Dave on the small crop off the bottom and while I am leaning with Jeffrey on some of the other issues......you could have introduced many of them in PP'ing......so I will ask a few more questions. What type of scan? What type of post processing did you do? If the scan slide is exposed for the whiter areas correctly......this should not be a problem to rework in PP'ing.......just remember to keep the reds and whites in check.......as any contrast increase willl push them over the top.I think the comp and colors are just fabulous in this one....so well worth taking another shot and exploring another go at the PP'ing. Looking forward to more!

[Robin Prange]

Thanks everyone for your comments! I too was a little disappointed with the image quality of the posted version. The 15 x 25 print on my wall is tack sharp with the whites and dark shadows all showing fine detail. I've been "boneing up" on how to process images for these small web files and with everyone's suggestions hopefully my future post will look more like the originals.

Roman, the scan was from my Nikon Coolscan 4000, color space adobe 98, PhotoShop slight contrast & saturation, convert to sRGB, re-size, slight sharpen, "save to web" , "optimize to file size" (190kb). Thanks for you encouragement.

Kaushik, It was a magical moment when the rising sun hit the blowing clouds at the crack of dawn... it only lasted about 5 frames at the exposure time. I know you would have loved to see it!

Thanks, I really appreciate everyone's encouragement and suggestions!