This is my first post in the landscape section. My photography is usually kids or sports, but I was able to travel to Sedona last week and captured a few pictures that I liked. I'm interested in feedback on colors/composition.
Any tips on displaying these would be helpful also. I'd like to display one or more of these, but I'm not sure how to choose matting colors to go with them.
The first one is nice, but I'd maybe try a 16:9 crop accentuating the mountains a bit more (making them more prominent and cut out some of the foreground and some of the sky, along with the distracting contrail)
The 2nd seems a bit tight.
The 3rd is nice and the vertical line works for this one.
The 4th is also very nice, but the tree clipped off on the right bugs me.
That said, I think these could be processed to punch up the colors a bit, especially in the rocks and trees. The lighting is pretty harsh, these would probably have benefitted greatly from shooting later in the day/early evening.
In terms of composition, I like #4 the most.
With #2, I see two problems - too tight and foreground not sharp.
About colors - white balance is pretty much on target only in #2, for the rest, it is shifted towards magenta.
alatoo60 wrote:
In terms of composition, I like #4 the most.
With #2, I see two problems - too tight and foreground not sharp.
About colors - white balance is pretty much on target only in #2, for the rest, it is shifted towards magenta.
JG
Nice set of pictures for your first post in this forum. I like the third one, plus the panoramic re-do of the first one is very nice, and I think you can make these pop more by using levels in Photoshop and sliding the black and midtone sliders to the right a bit. Delicate balance between making it pop and getting unrealistic. I'll bet you were cursing (as I was a few months ago) the jet contrails messing with that nice blue sky.
Another JG
John
I think the last pic of your post has the strongest comp and best exposure. Yes, the tiny clip of the tree branch can pull the eye, but its really no that big of a deal to that scene cause you want the eye to be drawn to the background.
Thanks for sharing!
alatoo60 wrote:
In terms of composition, I like #4 the most.
With #2, I see two problems - too tight and foreground not sharp.
About colors - white balance is pretty much on target only in #2, for the rest, it is shifted towards magenta.
I agree with Aleksandra, the WB is the biggest issue here. Time of day was not the greatest, using a polarizer will help with that, you just have to watch out that the sky doesn't get too crazy then.
I believe that is the same set of peaks. but I don't think I had that view from the direction I hiked in. It looks like you had better lighting than I did also.
JGwin, for white balance, you can use that guy in white t-shirt on one of your Sedona photos in Smugmug, and then, use the same setting for the rest of the pictures, as I assume they were all taken at about the same time and place.
Is your monitor calibrated?
Hi Jim, I can see foreground and background softness, more noticeable in some shots than others. The apertures according to the exifs are 2.8, 2.8, 2.8, 4.
Try somewhere in the range f/8 - f16 for these for more depth of field.
Sorry for messing with your file, but you do not need to pick neutral to correct color. You just need to remember how the colors looked like. That's done per your desire for colors to "pop": http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7161/6813400269_26c3c4f139_b.jpg
I applied Saturation mask and adjusted separately Red, Blue and Yellow - both hue and saturation.
alatoo60 - I appreciate the feedback and the adjustment. My monitor is calibrated, but I'm not sure my eyes are. I tried using the white and grey shirts as reference points, but the differences between some of the files were still pretty significant.
Would you mind sending me more details of the adjustments you used?
Mark2Mark - You're right I didn't change my aperature settings, the detail showing in the viewfinder threw me off, and I didn't even think about changing it until I started my editing a couple of days later.
I checked your EXIF - the reason why you cannot apply the same WB settings to all files - your WB was set to "auto", so it is different for each shot you took. Set it to "daylight", or shoot in RAW, and it will be much easier in PP.
As about details of adjustments - that's all I really did, adjusting hue and saturation in Red, Yellow and Blue separately. I live in Phoenix, and go to Sedona as often as I have a chance (as this is my most favorite place on Earth) - so I do remember how colors there look like. I did some minor dodging, burning and sharpening on your file, but it has nothing to do with the colors.
And if you want the colors to "pop", the easiest way is to try a recipe from Dan Margulis book
