Alaska Range - A Closer View - Revisited

[Rachel Hollander]

This image was taken between the other 2 I posted. I'm posting it in response to Dave's comment that he would prefer to see more of the darker mud area before the water covered it.

Canon 50D
70-200 @ 200mm
1/1000
f8
ISO 200
Tripod, straightened, levels adjustment, slight contrast boost, USM and NR applied. I decided not to crop this one but clearly there are several other options including pano.

C&C welcome and appreciated. Thanks,

Rachel

[Jay Gould]

Hi,

For me I would crop the oval mud flat out; I might even crop above the dark horizontal line and make a pano. Additionally, I would definitely boost the contrast as the sky is begging to be created more stormy and angry. i would also consider cropping the LH side keeping the cllosest white clout and removing the darker clouds and mountain area as it doesn't add to the image.

I love the mountains; for my taste I find the image bland. I happen to like strong contrast and reasonably strong saturation when the colors support more saturation.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Rachel,
Hmmmm.......I do think the NR is smoothing things out a bit too much in the mountains. Given your settings.......you are almost the sunny 16 rule......about 1/3 under exposed......so given the snow, should work out OK.....unless the original was dark and you brought it up? I think this one would benefit from a post processing rework......paying special attention to the snow covered range and bringing out as much detail as you could in the sky. I actually like the strong lines in the FG......so wouldn't touch that but I think tweaking the mountains and clouds will take this image up a notch.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Rachel, Good advice by Roman and some cropping advice by Jay however I too like the foreground and wouldn't omit that.

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks for the comments Jay and Roman.

Jay - if I understand your suggested crop IMO it would totally alter the intended image in a negative fashion. The expanse of the mud flats are an integral part of the image, as is the moving tide which has yet to cover the dark areas. Also the clouds were not dark and stormy, it never rained that day on Turnagain Arm. Rather, at that particular moment there was substantial gray cloud cover with the sun peeking through and hitting the mountain peaks just under 100 miles away, at other times there were areas of blue skies. As they say, you can experience all 4 seasons in one day in Alaska. This was one of those moments when almost everything was gray.

Roman - I went back to the RAW file and processed again. It's actually a fairly bright image which I had forgotten to say I darkened slightly for the OP. This time I did not darken it all, did levels, curve adjustment and boosted contrast, sharpened and applied an extra round of USM selectively on the mountains. No NR applied to this one. Please let me know what you think.

Thanks again for the comments and suggestions. They are appreciated.

Rachel

[Rachel Hollander]

Dave - Thanks for the comments. I think I was composing my post while you were posting.

BTW I should probably say that my favorite of the 3 I've posted is still the wider view I posted first. But working and reworking these images has been good practice for a relative newbie at CS5.

Thanks,
Rachel

[Robert Amoruso]

Rachel,

I would not crop the FG. One of the best elements of this scene are the mud flats. I also like the lower contrast renditions better then amping up the contrast.

[Jay Gould]

Rachael, :S3: for me the last rendition is very appealing!!

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks Robert and Jay. To me these images are about the mudflats.

Robert - I also like the low contrast versions since it was a low contrast day.

Thanks again,
Rachel