Sorry but what I'm seeing is (with the ubiquitous "to my eye") way over-saturated and too harsh. losing most, if not all shadow detail. The leading lines are nice, but do not overcome the processing.
Thanks guys ... I was struggling with the intensity of the reddish rock illuminated by the warm sunlight. The sun is actually late afternoon approaching golden hour. It just happens to be very "frontal" lighting that is pretty flat despite the late hour. I "blocked" it up trying to generate something in the lines.
Mostly wondering if this the comp / subject is worthy of the effort it'll take to extract something less "boring" than Karen mentions. As to "too much contrast" ... in the strata / sky or in the shadows vs. the highlights.
Plenty bright enough sun (Exif @ 1/125, f11, 160 ISO) ... just not anywhere close to noon. Time of day is one hour before sunset, roughly 11 degrees altitude, 287 degrees azimuth.
The ridge runs mostly N-S, so it is in strong profile sidelighting, as the east face is only receiving its illumination from the sky, while the strata is the west face, so it is in full illumination from the sun (and sky).
+1 @ contrast of scene ... I was referring more to the strata being lit at an angle that rendered the strata flat looking to me. As to the shadow detail ... that was mostly my PP that caused it to block up, but I struggled to find a balance that generated the character of the strata along with the shadow detail. LIkely, I may need to "paint in" the strata, leaving the overall scene with less gamma.
I'm finding the amount of difference in the red component to be challenging to understand how to PP. The southwest sun seems to be rather different from other areas that I've encountered. I'll break out the sooc for comp.
No worries ... nothing to be sorry about ... that's why we ask.
It is AWESOME to have people "shoot straight" with you. If you can't count on your friends & colleagues to be honest with you ... who can you trust.
Here is the raw converted to srgb jpg. It's a little larger than we normally post, but I figured I'd give you some room to crop and to see the kind of detail vs. flat in the strata that I'm trying to contend with.
As you can see, plenty of detail in the shadows to work with, but to me the foreground strata is "flat". To the "What's the point?" ... it is about the converging lines in the strata as being my primary "point".
I took a stab at it. I rotated it a bit and cropped to try and emphasize the lines. I then made a few adjustments in LAB and came back to RGB. I mde a couple of adjustments in Color Efex, framed it and applied a light sharpening. Here is what I came up with:
Thanks for the reworks ... interesting how varied we all have been with this one.
I'm gonna have to do some testing / experiment / study @ how to handle this kind of lighting with the extra strong reds and very little modeling. Maybe a trip into channels (which I've not used in quite a while) @ CMYK or LAB might be in order. I hadn't noticed it much before, but I've probably got several (unprocessed) images with this scenario involved.
My take. I used my standard ACR6 opening with some + shadow. I dropped sat to 10, I normally use 20, but reds tend to get to hot. I then used a gentle curve, shadow highlight and Topaz Photo Pop.
No cropping, seemed fine as is. I also brushed Topaz bold sky on the sky.
I've been following this thread and am reminded of a matter I often confront - when to put it aside - in other words spending an inordinate amount of time attempting to create a vision for a reality that simply does not exist.
To me, this is one of those images - basically monochromatic, interesting lines, but having little of real interest to hold one's attention; the image lacks the content to get there, or wherever.
Not to be deterred, I have a collection of similar images. Each time I revisit them in hopes something has changed, or a light will come on for a wonderful insight. Not. But, I remain ever the optimist
