Valley Of Desolation 2

[W. Walker]

OK, I'll take that as an official Rap-on-the-knuckles! 

I have made one or two changes. I tried to calm the sky down and added a little Clarity to the rocks on the left using the Brush Tool in Lightroom.

Slo, you don't have to PM me to crit any of my pictures - do as you see fit.

William

[RedwoodGuy]

OK, I'll take that as an official Rap-on-the-knuckles! 

I have made one or two changes. I tried to calm the sky down and added a little Clarity to the rocks on the left using the Brush Tool in Lightroom.

Slo, you don't have to PM me to crit any of my pictures - do as you see fit.

William

It's hard for me to do a precise side by side comparison. But - as I now see it, the sky looks more natural and is no longer commanding such attention. And I think I am seeing better contrast between the rocks and the plants clinging to the rocks.

Going back a few hours - - - I think amolitor made a very astute comment about the rock in the lower left, which seems to come from nowhere and be attached to no thing. It's not hugely disturbing to me, but it's not great either. It seems part of this ambiguous location of the photographer.

Neither of those quibbles however compares in importance to my comment about the light.

I think you made this picture better than before.

[Doug Frost]

It's better in every way, imo.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

There is something weird going on with the sky in both versions. In the first, it appears overcooked, with blown highlights, like there was too much Clarity applied. I personally dislike "crunchy" skies... clouds are three-dimmensinal, fluffy, and Clarity tends to flatten that. In second, it appears as if a negative Clarity was applied. There is no way of telling how to process that unless I see/get an unprocessed file.

The increase Clarity in the second version (on the rocks) does not work for me. I generally prefer the slightly muted contrast in the first version. Why? The source of light appears to be up and in front of the rock formation, leaving them in shade, illuminated indirectly by the bright sky above. As such, contrast in shade tends to be naturally muted, less "crunchy." It brings up the concept of believability (as controversial as it might be in itself): human perception expects to see muted contrast in the shade.

Two stones in the very corners, left and right bottom, are distracting. One way to deal with it is to tone them down (by darkening them and reducing contrast).

Composition: it starts nicely, leading the eye from left to right, in a gentle, horizontal s-curve. It creates a sense of depth and leads the eye to... and here we have a problem: it leads it to an empty area, at the intersection of thirds, where usually you would have the most interesting feature. I understand that the vantage point might be forced upon you though. It is not a catastrophic failure either. One can argue that it leads the eye to the sky and clouds -- in which case having them "just right" would be another plus. Another possibility is to get more details in that "empty area," via localized Clarity or additional sharpening perhaps?

[W. Walker]

Slo

Thanks for taking the time, I really appreciate it!

Firstly, the sky: I applied negative Clarity twice!!! Well spotted. (That is what 40 hours of Photoshop will do for you! ) I must say, it looked like an improvement to me.
Secondly, the clarity on the rocks: I accept that without argument, I was worried that it was a tad heavy.

I feel that I need to re-emphasise something about this picture. It all started with Heinz's post, and I dug this picture out as an illustration on his post. It was still in the old version of Lightroom and I was pleasantly surprised to see how the new version handled the shadows. I spent a few minutes on the processing of the first post.

Once I had posted it I thought, "Mmm it doesn't look too bad..." and it was a genuine afterthought to ask Red to have a look at it.

I will post the "out-the-camera" version when I get home tonight

This lengthy explanation to raise a point. Many moons ago, Russ, I think, made a comment to the effect that only photographs that one has mulled over, re-worked, given time to mature and so on should be posted.It seemed like a good point at the time, and still does.

In other words, I don't think I would have submitted this picture for serious critique in the first place!

William

[rogerxnz]

This version is a great improvement to my mind also. However, the lumps of very dark gray in the sky at the top edge look unnatural to me and the bright sky at the horizon is still too distracting.

This is probably where you needed to merge two images made from different exposure to cope with the range of tones.
Roger

[W. Walker]

As promised. I'm not sure if this is what you asked for Slo?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Portions of the clouds are seriously blown, ie, there are bunch of spots where all three channels are at 100%, at least in the jpeg. This are hard to recover (if at all) and hard to deal with. It is quite possible that RAW contains more detail.

Anyway, I went for a gentler approach and this is what I got:

[Chris Calohan]

I went for a little more drama in the sky but as per usual with this transfer protocol, it's not showing up like it does in photoshop...oh well, the same, but a bit different in that I opened some of the lights while it was still a full color image and closed in some of the darks though being careful not to lose detail in the sahdows...well, trying anyway.

[W. Walker]

Thanks Slo & Chris!
I appreciate the time and effort.

On the Raw image in Lightroom, when you hold down the Alt+Highlight - no clipping shows at -20.

Thanks again!

William

[degrub]

I am no expert, but the image draws my eye in two directions. The long view to the edge of the plateau in the far distance seems very natural, except that the gap and bright area just through canyon wall in the left half also pulls my eye. I wanted to reframe the image closer to a square frame of the right half, with just a small portion of the left wall.

But, i'm not sure what your focus was when you framed the image, so i probably have it wrong.

Frank

[W. Walker]

Frank

The main thing I remember was standing on a rock, just big enough to take me and the tripod, very close to the edge - and a pretty stiff breeze!

My main thought was to get off there asap!

I think my objective was really to get as much of the scene as possible, but I do see your point about that gap on the left. Thanks.

William.

Just a question to everyone: at what point do specular highlights in clouds become unacceptable? I ask this because, very often, to the naked eye, you cannot see detail in clouds.

[Heinz]

Warren,

Next time I go back there it will be with my ropes, I will hang off the side and get shots no one else will have. 

[W. Walker]

Warren,

Next time I go back there it will be with my ropes, I will hang off the side and get shots no one else will have. 

Harry - be safe!