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CaCO3
One of the most interesting feature of the California desert is the collection of tufas at the Trona Pinnacles. They are calcium carbonate spires rising from the bed of the formerly (now dry) Searles Lake. There was a cold front moving in and the clouds made some interesting background for this formation. The light was pretty flat though so I think B&W conversion works here. Like Diane said, the focal length is all relative, this one was shot at 50mm.
Last edited by Adhika Lie; 03-08-2016 at 11:59 AM.
Reason: typo
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Hi Adhika
Sorry, but this one is not working for me... I think its because the foreground and subject are too dark and the eye just does not want to go there... I also think there is a lot of cloud without a lot of detail that swamp the image... Sorry again..
Regards
DON
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Post a Thank You. - 1 Thanks
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Hi Don! No no, don't be sorry. I am really glad to hear your thoughts on this image. Not every image will work for everyone and That's totally alright. Thanks for sharing your thoughts again!
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Hi Peter, thanks for the suggestions! Here is a repost taking your comment about the brightness of the land (FG + Tufas) into account. Regarding the clarity/sharpness of the foreground, I am not sure what happened but it looked sharp when viewed 100% on my screen. Probably due to resizing. I used bicubic to interpolate in the OP. The repost here is with Lanczos 3.
Attached are some 100% views from my screen. The screenshots are from the center spires and from the base of one of the left spire. Sometimes this whole resizing thing can be a pain in the neck.
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A classic B/W -- reminiscent of some of the large format photographers of the American desert. A massive FG with the horizon low and a dramatic sky is classic, and this sky is amazing to me. I might think of even more detail in the rocks.
Mitch Dobrowner, .... I should be able to come up with a bunch of names, but I'm being pulled out of my chair by the next interruption. My husband says it's happy hour.
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Adhika, I like this a lot. I like the repost better. I would love to also see this in colour. Thank you for sharing.
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I prefer the repost too..
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Diane, I don't know how Mitch Dobowner did it with all of his storm photos. It was so windy last Sunday, I felt like I was gonna blown away by the wind. On a separate note, what would you suggest I do to bump up the detail on the ground? I have used Arthur's Nik 50/50 recipes and add like 40% opacity high pass filter on it. The sharpening was done on Lightroom before exporting for editing.
Glennie, Peter, and Don: Thanks so much!
Last edited by Adhika Lie; 03-10-2016 at 09:57 AM.
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I like the mood of this image and the RP addresses the few small problems in the original post. A classic American desert picture that works very well. The small isolated mound? hill? serves as a focal point to lead the eye into the picture. One small problem I have with the image is that I can't get any sense of scale.
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I'll usually do a curve as the first step if I want to bring out detail. Not too hard here to isolate the ground from sky using a mask -- basically a luminosity mask kind of selection. Then a mix of Detail Extractor, Tonal Contrast and High Pass is usually good. I never use a set recipe but tailor each adjustment to each image.
When you say "The sharpening was done on Lightroom before exporting for editing" I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Some careful sharpening can be done on a master file, but it's easy to go too far. As an image is re-sized during export another round of sharpening will occur to make up for softness in the re-sampling and it can bring out artifacts if the master was over-sharpened. Sharpening should generally be done on a re-sized JPEG after export, but not always necessary there.
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Macro and Flora Moderator
I like them all, the repost shows more tonal variation so I think I prefer that one. Did you try some clarity on the rocks?
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Originally Posted by
David Cowling
I like the mood of this image and the RP addresses the few small problems in the original post. A classic American desert picture that works very well. The small isolated mound? hill? serves as a focal point to lead the eye into the picture. One small problem I have with the image is that I can't get any sense of scale.
Thanks, David! Yeah, sense of scale is something that you won't necessarily get with the longer focal lengths.

Originally Posted by
Diane Miller
When you say "The sharpening was done on Lightroom before exporting for editing" I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Some careful sharpening can be done on a master file, but it's easy to go too far. As an image is re-sized during export another round of sharpening will occur to make up for softness in the re-sampling and it can bring out artifacts if the master was over-sharpened. Sharpening should generally be done on a re-sized JPEG after export, but not always necessary there.
My workflow is a two-step process: Lightroom to process the raw and then export as TIFF and edit it Photoshop style using Affinity Photo. In LR, I usually applied some sharpening to it with masking. I am very wary not too oversharpened in LR because I usually sharpen it again after resizing (usually from the Export functionality). Recently, I have added the final (after resize) sharpening using Nik Output Sharpener. This one is very easy to overdo, I usually only added about 5-10% of sharpening "power". After reading this, maybe I should leave the sharpening towards the very end. Anyway, I think you will agree that sharpness is not equal to details. I wil see what more I can bring out from the raw file for this one. Thanks, Diane!

Originally Posted by
Jonathan Ashton
I like them all, the repost shows more tonal variation so I think I prefer that one. Did you try some clarity on the rocks?
Thanks for the kind words, Jon! Yeah, I did apply some clarity to the rocks.
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Landscapes Moderator
Hi Adhika, the repost is a big improvement for this image and makes it work in my opinion. I too love the clouds and am glad you included so much of them within this scene. Beautiful work on the repost!
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Thanks for stopping by, Andrew! I am glad you like it! :)
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Ah -- I just remembered another name of another B/W photographer whose sparse landscape work I admire: Chuck Kimmerle. If you don't know his work, I think you'll love it.