Wednesday Landscapes, 7 June 2017

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.

This one is from mid-March, as sunrise crept under the lifting fog. (ISO 400, f/11, 1/400s, zoom at 62 mm). I cropped off about 25% on the left and bottom to let the left-most wave front leave the frame at a graceful place and to exclude a dark tongue of dry sand in the upper left. Other than that, the only significant post-processing (Lightroom) was a reduction in clarity and a stretching out of the light tones (increased white point, reduced highlights). Then minor fiddling with exposure, shadows (opening them up), tint (increasing it slightly to bring out the pinkness of the dawn light), and vibrance (a slight increase, also to bring out the dawn colors). After reducing the clarity, I ordinarily would have introduced a gradient to bring it back into the foreground, but in this case the gradient detracted from the mood and I deleted it. As a last step, I straightened the horizon. Again. I don’t think I’ve ever shot a straight horizon.

Here's one that Getty sold to Travel & Leisure:

Paddling Toward Mt. Evans by David Stephens, on Flickr

As you can see, it was quite a nice day for photography. The haze level was very low and recent snows had capped the Rocky Mountains. I was at this spot because I was shooting a group of around 200 American white pelicans that were fishing as a group and feasting off fingerling shad that had filled the lake. The pelicans were filling their pouches with fish on every dip into the lake. I was shooting the pelicans with my 500mm lens on Canon's crop-sensor 7D MkII. In case there's a landscape photo-op, I always carry my 50+mp 5DS-R and a vest full of lenses, but usually with an EF 70-200mm f/4L IS mounted.

I took this shot at 200mm, f/8, ISO 400, 1/1000-sec and hand-held. Almost all my shooting is hand held. There's almost no post-processing, other than the 2.5 to 1 crop. Basically followed the rule, "f/8 and be there."

It was used in one of those articles saying something like, Ten Great Cities To Visit, where Denver was one of the cities. Most of the stock pix of Denver show the downtown skyline from City Park, so something different, showing recreation, urban and mountains pulled their chain. After a few years on Getty, I have NO IDEA what will sell and not. It's got to be tack sharp and properly exposed, but I can provide no further guidance. My best sellers are people in nature, big bucks, coyotes and owls.

Strata

Prince Edward Island

http://www.leonin.net/img/s7/v166/p2354246417-4.jpg