Canon 1Ds MKIII, ISO 250, EF 70-200mm at 145mm, f/11, 1/160, hand held.
Craters of the Moon National Monument was a little out of my way, but worth the time it took to detour.
I was fascinated by the shadows created by the late afternoon sun but troubled by how to capture them.
Your comments and suggestions would be appreciated.
I found the image interesting with nice use of sidelight and good exposure. But my eye was looking around for a center of interest and did not find one. I tried a crop (above) and liked the diagonal the rocks in the center of the image made. I also did a reverse s-curve in a Curves adjustment to lower contrast and in a Selective Colot adjustment added 2% black to black and neutral channels to provide a bitr of pop to the image. Also in selective color I subtracted black from cyan and blue color channels to lower the blue cast in the shadows. I like how the large rock in the FG left balances with the rock in the BG right.
Last edited by Robert Amoruso; 03-02-2008 at 06:50 PM.
Thank you Rob.
The whole landscape was like this. I struggled to find a nice clean bottom edge and yet still give some of the scope of size. You make a good suggestion and took the time to work the image and explained your techniques well. Thank you.
I will continue to work it and try and get it close to yours.
I think you picked the right position for the direction of light as the shadows and highlights accenturate the details well and exposure was good and thats a big part of the battle in this type of image. Next is finding that right arrangement of elements that creates a pleasing image and thats the rest of the battle. You are heading in the right direction. When the big picture (think wide-angle) is not working for me, I go for details as you did at 145mm. I cropped it further to limit the images to less details of the rocks to give the viewer a more well-defined selection of elements (shadows/highlights on the snow and the rocks) to lead the eye around the image.
Looks like a foreign landscape. The snow texture is wonderful and the dark/light contrast between snow and rock is very neat. I like the crop of the 2nd version but prefer the color in the 1st one. Nice work!