Great Fountain Geyser

It's difficult to offer yet another view of what so many thousands

of people have photographed, but I'd appreciate your comments.

A unique image, imho. Very beautiful, well composed. I don't think I would change anything in this image.

 

-steve

It's wonderful! It can't be like everyone else's!

Potentially this could have been a great photo. What's holding it back is the picture quality and it seems a bit soft. What camera and lens did you use on this shot?

Thank you all for your comments. Much appreciated.

 

The photo was taken with Velvia 100F and a not-so-great Sigma 28-200 lens on a Maxxum 600si. I have since moved on to much better lenses and a 7D.

 

Will, it's interesting that you are troubled by the softness of the image. I had given some thought to sharpening it and decided not to as a way of adding to the unearthly mysterious quality that I see. But now you have me curious about what it would look like sharpened, and I will give it a try for comparison.

Don't be so shy, you've a very unique shot here and I like it very much. Thanks for sharing! :)

Hi Mel

This could be a nice moody shot but there is way to much of a magenta cast in it for my liking.

Try and correct some out if possible.

Nice composition -- I like it. The sun streaks in the sky add to the image. I agree with Will regarding the softness; I'd like to see the foreground sharper. I also somewhat agree with Peter regarding the heavy magenta, but Peter's solution is too much, and I'd experiment with decreasing the magenta only a bit, especially in the horizon.

magical place and time, cheers Jana

After all these comments... maybe you simply saw it with YOUR eyes as it is... that is "magenta"... and so did the camera ! It happened to me that some people declared that some of my pictures were not "natural" but I really captured exactly what I saw and it was not a matter of processing or so... But I agree about the sharpness... this might be due to your "old" camera or you, moving slightly since there was little light ! Anyway, I like it the way it is. (the other example sent is a bit too "cold" ; I maybe would have appreciated it before I saw your original !)

Great shot. I think the magenta adds to the photo.

bruce

I played with the magenta saturation quite a bit and decided to leave it as it is. Decreasing the magenta took the fire out of the image, and Yellowstone is an area of thermal features. I even liked a bit more magenta, but in the end thought the original was the right choice.

 

Sharpening does make elements of the image pop out, but even low-to-medium sharpening created an artificial look that my consultant (my wife) and I didn't care for. We liked the sharpened versions, but we also disliked them. This was a more difficult choice than the magenta question.

 

Again, I decided to leave the original upload as it is. I hope the smaller one in this post gives an idea of what medium sharpening looks like. (I used Focal Blade's edge sharpening.)

 

I shot this on a tripod, so camera movement wasn't an issue. I think the softness is from the subject moving rather violently: this is an erupting fountain. Stephen mentioned the foreground. The dark bands are soft because what is visible is water running over natural mineral terraces. They're all dark shadows since I was shooting into the sun. You gotta go there and see it!

 

Again, thanks to each of you for your wonderful comments and suggestions. They make getting critiques a joy.

The sharpened one is beautiful, too, but I know what you mean about keeping the original. I like it the best. It is an awesome image!

WOW!!!!!

Mel, I think I see what Will was writing about. Is it possible the scanner had a prblem with focus? This to me has to be one of the more oringinal photo's of this geyser that I've seen before. With regard to the magenta cast, each to his/her own, I'm not using a calibrated monitor so I couldn't advise one way or the other. If this was mine, I would have it drum scanned. Excellent image imo. Congrats - Sean

Kim, Mark, Sean, and Wilson, thank you all for your additional comments and suggestions. The image does print very nicely on my Epson 2200. The artifacts in the sharpened version are what stopped me from replacing the original. I may try scanning the slide again at some point to see if I can do better. Or maybe I'll just take another trip to Yellowstone.