MT. Shasta - The other California

[John Platt]

Image from our photo club outing this week. This is a lavender farm outside of Mt. Shasta, CA.

Blended 2 shots to preserve the sky, first shot EXIF data is posted, with a -3 EV second shot for sky only.

1/125
f/16
200 ISO
-2/3 EV
24mm
Tripod

Slight crop to eliminate dead grass on left edge. Processed in LR3 and CS5. Exported using LR3.



http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6150/5991453149_1c5b628e17_b.jpg


Comments welcome.

JP
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jps_view/

[dankearl]

Nice subdued Sunset, the lavender field is really nice.
I don't know about the stone in the field, sort of distracting to me.
Minor note, a dust spot on the upper left.
Well done.

[Don Railton]

Hi John
I agree somewhat with Dan about the stone, mainly because it draws the eye away from the colour and detail on the right towards the darker detailess area just above the stone.
Can you do anything to increase detail here with the two exposures you have taken? There is a flare to the right of the sun I would also clone out... Nice shot, TFS.

DON

[Dave Mills]

Hi John, Beautiful light on the lavendar with good sun placement. Good job on the blend but agree on getting rid of the spot next to the sun. Even though the rock is placed well on diagonal to the sun it is breaking the flow of the field to my eye. The pano crop also works....

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey John,
Great advice and observations above. I think just toning down the rock will go a long way to minimize its impact. I know that you have some bleed in the yellows around the sun.....I might pull the sat down a few points but not at the expense of making it muddy. All in all the fix of the dust bunny and flare and toning down the rock will make this shine! The layers make this and it is very nicely done!

[Morkel Erasmus]

Some good points made above, John. Love the light on the lavender field! Pano works well, I would also like to see a tad more detail in the BG. :c3:

[John Platt]

Thank you to everyone who took the time to offer suggestions, I really appreciate the chance to learn in a friendly enviroment.

For the repost I took the follwing steps:

Added a masked mulitply layer to slightly darken the trees.
Desaturated the orange and sun flares around the sun rays.
Cropped enough to move the rock to a spot which I hope is less distracting.
Selectively and slightly sharpened an area in the lavender to move your eye off the rock and into the middle ground.

Hopefully they are improvements!
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6134/5996683767_e84bb086aa_b.jpg

Again, thanks for the feedback.

JP