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Archive 2015 · Landscapes WA

  
 
lighthound
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Landscapes WA


Ok folks. I've been tormenting myself long enough.

I've been wanting to post a few images I just shot Friday and Saturday for this weeks WA but felt that I "should" be able to critique these on my own and decide which one is the strongest image to use. But I can't and would like your advice on these images.

The Mountain Laurel is in full bloom here now and I got really excited to see Fred's WA this week was landscapes. I knew I was in for a fun weekend.

This first image (The first kiss) I captured just as the very first beams of the morning light sun was peaking through the forest and it hit this one cluster of blooms and looked absolutely magical the way it lit up with the dark waterfalls behind it. I had a heck of a time capturing this quickly and it took a few tries before I nailed it with 5 bracketed shots without blowing out the white blooms and still had enough shadow in my over exposed shot to pull out the waterfalls and stream. I didn't want to pull it up to much because it took away the impact of the star of the show. It really was amazing to be there at that very moment. Less than 2 minutes later and the scene had changed to something completely different. Yes I have shots of that as well but they are not as strong as this one.

The second and third images (The twins #1 & #2) are from the last location I visited Saturday morning. Unfortunately I didn't get there until around 9 am so I lost my good light but it was still in shade at the time so there was no strong light shadows to deal with. I have visited this place once before many years ago but back then I was not into photography and the shear beauty of this place fell upon blind eyes at the time. I had long forgotten what a magnificent place this was and I was pleasantly surprised that it offered a slight touch of the blooming Mountain laurel for me to capture. I'll be heading back there in the fall for sure.

Any advise you could share on any improvements would be much appreciated as well as any comments in general.

Thanks!

Dave





The first kiss






The twins #1






The twins #2




May 18, 2015 at 03:31 PM
RustyBug
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Landscapes WA


A nice outing I'm sure ...

A little short on explanation today, but here's how they workout for me.

The last one looks kind of HDR-ish.
The middle one looks to be my preference of the waterfalls.

The first one seems to have a heavy CYAN cast.

That said, for competition, I think "The First Kiss" is the one I would enter. Correct that strong cyanic cast and I think you'll have a lovely image, with a somewhat unique (read, a zillion waterfall images are tough to succeed in competition) and attractive image.

Of particular note, is the lighting in the first one ... while some parts are dappled, they give some interesting tonal values in the water and of course are highlighting your floral @ showcase.

As mentioned, the WB is an issue for me. One that could either be corrected, or possibly consider conversion if correction doesn't suit you.

That's my .02 ... GL with WA ... learning and growth being the real prize. Of course, votes are kinda nice too.



May 18, 2015 at 03:47 PM
lighthound
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Landscapes WA


Thank you Kent! I have looked and looked and looked at these shots and until I posted them here and saw them shrunk down I never picked up on the cyan WB in the first image. Now that I've seen it in the "mini" size I just looked at the full size and can see the issue. Crazy!

I'll definitely correct that tonight.

And yes, the way that first light hit those flowers within that entire scene almost made my hair stand up on my arms. I've not experienced that feeling before while shooting. I knew the moment would last but a few minutes and I was the only person to witness it. I'm just glad I kept my composure!

Well... sorta. Thank god for Tripods and remote shutter releases is all I can say.



May 18, 2015 at 04:00 PM
ben egbert
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Landscapes WA


I really like the first two, but Kent is right, there seems to be a cast. Fix that and it might be my fav as well.


May 18, 2015 at 04:01 PM
AuntiPode
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Landscapes WA


It's very hard to do a good and interesting waterfall. Falls need something special to lift them from the ordinary. The first has more potential.


May 18, 2015 at 05:43 PM
RustyBug
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Landscapes WA


AuntiPode wrote:
It's very hard to do a good and interesting waterfall. Falls need something special to lift them from the ordinary. The first has more potential.


Twins #1 ... still a nice presentation ... even if not the double rainbow, unicorn doing back-flips through a Hula-Hoop on fire, blindfolded while juggling three cats and a piranha, variety.



May 18, 2015 at 08:27 PM
lighthound
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Landscapes WA


Here's my revised image to correct the WB. I think I got it this time? I also made that tiny twig go away that was in front of the waterfall on the left. It was driving me crazy.

I almost decided to drop the shadows down to emphasize the "kissed" flower cluster more but decided I best not because it would make the entire image too dark.


Thoughts?

Dave




The first kiss (revised)




May 18, 2015 at 08:35 PM
beavens
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Landscapes WA


Still seeing the cast, Dave. I played around sloppily and have got it a little better, but it definitely will take some work to get right.

Is your subject the waterfall or the flowers? If it's the flowers I'd tighten things up and give them more weight in the scene. But that will probably knock you out of landscape, though.

Cheers,

Jeff







May 18, 2015 at 11:27 PM
lighthound
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Landscapes WA


Thanks Jeff! The main subject is the illuminated flowers but the magic was the entire scene with the contrasting dark shadows and bright flowers as a peaceful scene. I had already tightened it up as far as I think it should go to help bring the emphasis to the illuminated flowers. Like you noted, any tighter would kill it from being a landscape shot.

Now about this cyan cast.
Are you just messing with my head here? I swear that your edit (to my eyes) has even more bluish colors in the water than my first image had. On my edit I had even asked my wife for help to make sure I got rid of the cyan cast. I have to say I'm a little shocked that you still see it. I drastically changed my WB to the warm side and dropped the green saturation and luminance down a little because the temp change appeared to also introduce a green cast to everything. I know this might not come into play here but keep in mind that many of the flowers are pink in color but some are almost pure white.

This cyan thing is really troubling to me as this isn't the first time folks have said this about my images. In my original image above I "thought" I was clearly seeing it after I posted it here and Kent pointing it out as well. And during the edit I thought I saw a huge improvement as I warmed the temp up.

I verified that I used the correct camera calibration profile generated by my colorchecker passport software, but obviously that is not full-proof. Where is this coming from? Is this something I'm doing in processing or is it a result of my camera sensor or lens or the combo? Is it caused by blending images? And why is it always cyan that I get screwed up and no other color/cast?

I wish LR had a cyan filter or slider where I could simply drop it down or scan the image to remove this cast because I thought my edit looked perfect.



May 19, 2015 at 07:47 AM
beavens
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Landscapes WA


Definitely more bluish, but the whites are a bit closer to what I thought they would be in reality.

This one might take some selective WBing because it seems like certain parts are more cyan and certain parts more green.



May 19, 2015 at 07:57 AM
ben egbert
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Landscapes WA


My attempt, I wanted to get that pool of white water at the bottom white, and it was really off, way too much blue and not enough red.

I first desaturated cyan using an action I have, maybe 30 on cyan. Then I eyedroppered the white water and made a curves layer and choose the white color picker and selected the target. This fixed the white water but screwed up the rest of the image so I just painted the water up to the place where it starts falling over the edge.









May 19, 2015 at 10:20 AM
AuntiPode
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Landscapes WA


To white balance for the color challenged, choose dim water and balance it to gray or white water highlight and color balance it to white.


May 19, 2015 at 03:31 PM
lighthound
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Landscapes WA


I tried that but iircc bad things happened and things looked really wonky. I suspect I did something wrong. 255 is what the RGB values for white should be correct?


May 19, 2015 at 03:53 PM
AuntiPode
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Landscapes WA


Red 255, Green 255, Blue 255 is full white. White with detail is equal pixel values less than 255. Only shop with the eye dropper on what should be specular highlights. You may have to tinker. Whether to set the curves from a black point, a white point of a gray point depends upon the image. I've had my best luck with gray point corrections in a curves layer. However shopping around for the proper point can be critical. That's where enlisting a color consultant can help. Alternately, persuade the consultant to learn how to color balance for you.

For example, to balance by numbers, if the original image has fully white highlights (255,255,255 - what some refer to as blown highlights), they tell you nothing about color balance. However, if the original is raw and you can turn down the exposure until what should be a specular highlight shows lower values, the imbalance of the three color values reveals the sort of color imbalance. That's why finding what should be a proper gray is usually an easier and better method because you assume even color values in the mid range. Unfortunately, not every image has a suitable spot that out to be a medium gray. If I were color challenged I'd have probably developed a workflow to compensate based upon such adjustments, ... or I'd have specialized in monochrome because my only available potential color consultant too easily turns cranky.




May 19, 2015 at 05:00 PM
RustyBug
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Landscapes WA


To help with your color issues ... try CRANKING up the saturation to 100% (temporarily) and see if that assists with your ability to detect the cyanic areas (that you think should be neutral). I have a slight challenge at differentiating shades of cyan, so I use the 100% trick at diff times.

Like Karen mentioned equal R,G,B values represent neutral. When I have an area in the scene that I want neutral, I try to get the R,G,B values within 5 points of each other. 10 points isn't too bad (although that's quite a bit in the shadows @ more so than the highlights).

This one was rather challenging at the amount of blue / cyan involved ... still didn't really get it where I would have liked, but here's "an" rendering.







May 19, 2015 at 09:16 PM
lighthound
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Landscapes WA


AuntiPode wrote:
or I'd have specialized in monochrome because my only available potential color consultant too easily turns cranky.


You have no idea how accurate you last statement is Karen. How did you know!

Thanks for that info Karen. I gave up on this one for my entry because I tried to correct it again and still didn't like how it looked. I'm definitely not giving up on this image though. I think it has some great potential.


Thank you Ben for showing me your edit. I can see the difference when it's in front of me like this but I'll be damn if I can see it as I'm adjusting.



Hey Kent!
Oh hell yeah! I really like that tighter crop! I was afraid to go in that tight but that really looks great! Thank you for that. And as I told Karen, I'm not giving up on this shot. I can be a stubborn bastard when I put my mind to it. I just ran out of time and went with the lake shot as a safer bet that I could get it fixed right. At least I hope I did.

Oh and I did try your 100% sat trick you had told me about during my covered bridge cyan issue but all I saw was a ton of green all over the place. Couldn't see this damn cyan if my life depended on it.

I'm not sure if you and Karen caught my comment earlier but I discovered that other normal folks (not colorblind) have similar issues when importing their RAW files as DNG's. Take a guess at what I have been doing all along for the past 6-8 months.
It may not be the total answer as to why this is happening to me but it might help. So from now on I'm importing my RAW's only and no more conversions.



May 19, 2015 at 09:51 PM
RustyBug
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Landscapes WA


I've got no experience with DNG's ... so I'm no help there. Glad you like the crop.

... So, do you see cyan as green (next door neighbor) or blue (other neighbor), or gray scale?







May 19, 2015 at 10:17 PM
lighthound
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Landscapes WA


Is see the cyan as cyan here in your example. Actually the answer to this question is not a simple one so please let me explain a little.

I have the most common color deficiency that men inherit called Deuternormal trichromatism or (deutan and tritan).
Big fancy words (that I had to look up) that simply means that I have 3 out of the normal 3 photopigments but one of them is messed up and makes my spectral sensitivity very weak in the Red and Green spectrum. I see these two colors but not like you normal folks see them. The closer these colors are in "hue" to other colors the less I can see of them.

In other words you normal folks have 4K monitors for eyes and I have something closer to 720p or maybe 1080P.

There is something called "color confusion lines" were lucky folks like me confuse colors that are closer together on the confusion lines.

http://www.opticaldiagnostics.com/images/info_color_deficiencies.jpg


So back to your original question with the image you posted.
I "know" the circle with the "C" is cyan because you told me it was and therefore I see it as cyan. Especially next to other very solid bold colors.

But if you put that single circle on a blank sheet of white by itself and asked me what color it was I would tell you it was baby blue or light blue. I see no green in it at all and could possibly mistake it for the "M" circle if they were on opposite sides of the room. The "M" circle simply looks like a darker shade of blue to me than the "C" circle.

In my life, other than traffic lights and random ribbing I got from family and friends, I have never really been troubled by my limited color vision. Until now. Color is everything in the photography world.

And yes Karen and Jeff, I have considered going completely mono but strangely enough I don't enjoy working in mono like I do color. All I can think is that it's because I can see colors and can push them closer to the extreme such that I can see them like normal people can see them everyday. And trust me when I say I have a hard time not over doing the saturation in my images. At least the ones I share with others here. The ones hanging on my walls would probably make your toes curl and hair fall out. But my wife tolerates them.



May 20, 2015 at 11:04 AM
beavens
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Landscapes WA


BTW Kent - MUCH better attempt that what I put up. I definitely saw the blue casting when I posted it, but compared to yours it may as well have been a blue waterfall.

Jeff



May 20, 2015 at 11:44 AM
lighthound
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Landscapes WA


beavens wrote:
BTW Kent - MUCH better attempt that what I put up. I definitely saw the blue casting when I posted it, but compared to yours it may as well have been a blue waterfall.

Jeff



Oh sure! NOW you say that!

I knew you were just testing me.



btw, how does Ben's edit look to everyone? Did his method work ok? It looks right to me.



May 20, 2015 at 12:44 PM
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