Wednesday Landscapes, 29 August 2018

You are invited to upload one or more of your landscape photos and, if you’d like, to accompany your image with some commentary: challenges you faced in making the image? your intent for the image? settings? post-processing decisions? why you did what you did? the place and time? or an aspect you’d like feedback on? And please feel free to ask questions of others who have posted images or to join the discussion. If you don’t feel like using words, that’s OK too—unaccompanied images (or unaccompanied words, for that matter) are also very much welcomed. As for the technicalities, the usual forum guidelines apply: files < 1 MB; image size <1000 px maximum dimension.

 

That was a stunning group of photos last week—I’d have loved to have any one of them hanging on my wall.

 

This week I’m still pondering the harsh light of—in this case—high noon. This particular image had fairly brief window of time in which it would work. When I got to the site about a half-hour earlier at a little past noon, the background spruce trees were nice and dark, but so were the apple trees; and about 15 minutes after I made the photo, there was enough sunlight on the spruces that the apple trees no longer glowed.

 

Zion N.P., Utah. (Canham DLC, 90mm f/8 Schneider Super Angulon, Velvia)

 

Pajarito Church at Black Mesa, San Idelfonso Pueblo, New Mexico. (Canjam DLC, Nikkor 75mm f/4.5 SW, Velvia)

 

Note: I posted a B&W image of this same view last week, they were both made just a few minutes apart.

 

Five hand held images were merged in PS, then cropped for this pano composition.

Another panoramic composition. This one is of the Navaho Knobs trail at Capitol Reef National Park. Seven images taken in portrait orientation using a tripod were merged in Photoshop CS5. There are seven hikers on the trail on the right side of the image, who are hard to notice, unless you are looking for them. Edited August 29, 2018 by Glenn McCreery

I am having a hard time deciding which of the color or black and white versions of the panorama I like the best. Posting the color version immediately above the black and white version tends to overwhelm the more subtle black and white version if viewed simultaneously. Edited August 29, 2018 by Glenn McCreery

Leslie - I sometimes find that mid-day lighting works well for black and white photos (such as used in many of Edward Weston's Death Valley photos). You might try converting your lovely, as is, photo to black and white and see what you think.

This is my first submission to this forum. This image was taken yesterday morning at Gravelly Point, VA. It was so humid around 6am that my windshield took all of 30 minutes to dry and the side windows took much longer. I thought I wanted to take a photo of the humidity East across the Potomac River. This is that image taken with my Canon 5D Mark IV, 100mm Prime, f/2.8, ISO 200 with no additional edits. In order for the image to be visible here I loaded it to LR and then saved the small image to my tablet. There are nine rowers in a kayak and a separate person in a motorized boat in the center of the image... I didn’t see them until I uploaded the image to LR. Hazy, hot and humid! Edited August 29, 2018 by mpressionz

Nikon F, 28mm-85mm Nikkor, Tri-X, EI800, D76.

Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde N.P., Colorado, 1990. (Deardorff 8x10, Kodak 10" f/6.3 Wide Field Ektar, Tri-X)

 

Pajarito Church, with Sangre de Cristo range as a backdrop, San Idelfonso Pueblo, New Mexico, 1990. (Deardorff 8x10, Kodak 10" f/6.3 Wide Field Ektar, Tri-X) This spot is just a few miles south of Hernandez, NM, where Adams made his famous Moonrise image.

 

Leslie you put up a nice image this week. In fact I thank all the images posted are very good. I am posting a mid day image.

I am having a hard time deciding which of the color or black and white versions of the panorama I like the best. Posting the color version immediately above the black and white version tends to overwhelm the more subtle black and white version if viewed simultaneously.

I would like to see true monochrome - I think it would be stronger than the sepia which I see on my monitor. As to comparing - preferred hair color of S/O.

Thanks for your comments Sandy. I went with sepia toning to suggest the warm colors of the sandstone. For comparison, here is a black and white rendition that has not been toned. .

Olympus XA, Kodak Pro-image 100, home C41 developing. An image from a test roll. I usually include a landscape when I test newly acquired vintage 35mm cameras. Very light post processing was done, hardly any, but sharpening was really necessary

 

Cloud detail from ominous storm building a few miles from my apartment last night.

 

Leica Monochrome, Type 246, and 135mm f3.4 APO Telyt..

 

 

and 90mm f2 APO Summicron..

 

 

Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia

In the vicinity of Phoenix, Arizona

Glacier N.P., Montana. (Rollieflex 3.5F 75mm f/3.5 Schneider Xenotar)

 

Glacier N.P., Montana. (Rollieflex 3.5F 75mm f/3.5 Schneider Xenotar)

 

Glacier N.P., Montana. (Canham DLC, 90mm f8 Schneider Super Angulon, FP4+, PMK Pyro)

 

You might try converting your lovely, as is, photo to black and white and see what you think

I cannot resist a challenge!

Here’s a B&W version, done in Lightroom. I like it.

The puzzles I ran into mostly involved figuring out how to re-balance foreground, mid-ground, and background:

 

(1) the slight color differences within the foreground vegetation had added a perceived element of texture that wasn’t supported by tonal values alone, so I added a gradient at the bottom that increased contrast and clarity.

 

(2) the difference in color between the apple trees and the meadow vegetation had made the apple trees stand out a lot from the meadow. This contrast also was not supported well by the initial B&W tones, so I reduced luminance in the orange range. That darkened the meadow but left the apple trees untouched.

 

(3) in the color version, the blue-greens of the background trees reduced the importance of the light on their upper limbs so that they weren’t competing directly with the yellow-green apple trees. In the B&W version, the light tones up there drew too much attention, so I used a gradient to reduce highlights at the top of the frame.

 

And finally, I took advantage of the fact that violet hues showed up mostly in the trunk and branches of the largest apple tree: I increased luminance in the violets to make the trunk and branches stand out a bit more, and then brushed in increased clarity and lightened shadows on the trunk and branches to increase the effect.

 

I then did the same things to a second image, shot from a different angle. In the color version, I preferred the first frame. In B&W, though, I’m thinking the second might have the edge, and I’m trying to figure out why. My guess is that in the color version, a small area of saturated color immediately becomes the star player. In B&W, although an area of contrasting tonal value has the makings of a star, texture becomes more than just a bit player, so it requires a higher proportion of apple tree to compete successfully with the meadow.