Half Dome from the valley after a hard day's climbing

Here it comes....

 

Richard

 

But the elves got it wrong. The Enterprise has left the building. All that is left are the contrials and this snap shot.

 

Nice portfolio.

This was done in Photoshop I don't care what anyone says, its fake, bla bla bla, moan, cry, fart, splutter, cough .... :-)

 

Nice photo Richard. Beautiful light hitting the Dome, the Fuji Velva is good stuff. Love to see a bigger image.

well done Richard.. get the 1st word in! lol!

 

I personally aren't too sure about all that black foreground. A better, bigger scan would be nice... got one somewhere? Reminds me of a volcano!

It is a fairly interesting pic. My favorite part is the little virtical cloud formation cascading off the top of the mountain top. It is realy hard to see because the scan is very small. I would love to see a close up croped scan of that detail. I am not sure of this and I don't want to falsely accuse you of anything, but the lighting on the clouds does seem a bit inconsistant. I think that it is the general consenses of the critics that it is not bad to digitally manipulate an image, just that not disclosing what was done to it diminishes the credability of the artist. You may be a good photographer or graphic artist or a little of both, I just prefer to know what to attribute the credit to. This is a nice picture and if it is un-manipulated, I say - way to go! nice job.

Those are actually smoke signals. From what I can make out, it says: "Tanto hungry. stop. only 3 eclairs left. stop. send food. stop."

 

Excellent portfolio BTW.

Without a resonable scan, I really can't comment...

Before discussion goes off on whether this was digitally manipulated or not (as Kyle surmised, oh so gently): It wasn't. When I did the scan I barely knew how to open PS let along do anything with it. (I know a little better now though). And this is one crappy scan I did right after I first got my Epson 1200U with trannie adapter over a year ago. I would not have left it as such a POS scan if I knew it would be POW.

I would love to see a better scan of this. It seems from this one that the foreground is totally devoid of detail.

I guess a couple months ago there was a very similar snapshot: mountain illuminated by the orange glow of sunset, an underexposed foreground, clouds not separated from the mountain.

 

Dear elves: next time can you find a shot done by a pro for comparison. Judicial use of an ND grad, moving around until the proper balance between the mass of the mountain and the bulk of the foreground hills is found, and using the proper focal-length lens.

 

Sorry, but this is another snapshot, more a memorable for the shooter than for us.

TY for clarifing it for me, I appreciate it and I will sleep better tonight. :) I also apologize if I sounded harsh earlier. I just assumed that you were familiar with PS judgeing by some of your other shots.

Blocked up shadows in front, lurid colors in back--looks more like an ad for Velvia than a photograph of Half Dome.

I don't want to sound too harsh, but I don't think this photograph is any sort of special picture of Half Dome. I think Velvia made the colors too saturated. Also, IMO, this particular cloud formation is just an added distraction to the overall photograph (unless you are a Star Trek fan like POW elves seem to be). This photo looks just like a typical snapshot of Half Dome that many tourists take (which of course, it is). Nothing particularly special about it (I'm not a Trekkie).

 

OTOH, the rest of Richard's portfolio, IMO, is EXCELLENT! I wonder why the POW elves did not choose any other photo from Richard's portfolio as a POW. I think Richard's shot of Lake Matheson before sunset is a far better landscape photograph than this shot of Half Dome. Also the Lake Matheson shot, IMO, makes a very effective use of Velvia's increased color saturation.

 

 

"I was relaxing with my buddies having a beer when this misty cloud formation appeared"

For those bitching that it looks like a snap shot, the photographer says as much.

For those bitching that his other photos are much better -- most every POW is not as good as something in the photographers photo.net portfolio, or at least to read the comments that is what you'd believe.

My 2cents regarding this photo...

I'll go with the velvia advert comment (which for a snap shot i would think is pretty good).

Its a great pic.Love the clouds.My nitpicking is with the color-it seems pretty fake i.e.velvia or too much polarizer.Maybe im wrong as ive only been to yosemite once but i dont know if ive ever seen orange/red rock in the sierras.In utah yes,sierra nevada no.

...and what a dull picture. Only the cloud is interesting. The foreground is just a black plamage. There is no visible detail in the mountain. Nice blue sky. Expensive filter, I'm sure! There is just no BALANCE in the image. Sorry!

This photo could have been improved considerably by using a graduated neutral density filter to open up the foreground.

 

Otherwise, much of the pure black foreground should have been omitted; more sky would have been interesting.

the formation & framing is great.

congrats...

Half Dome is erupting! Evacuate!

This photo looks like, a tourist who's been touring all day and was so tired he decided to let his 8yr old son take the picture. Or maybe I just don't like nature photos.

jeez!

Congradulations on pic of the week!

Although I must say that most of the comments I have read on it seem to be loaded with sour grapes. Snapshot this snapshot that. Who gives a rats ass! All photographs are snapshots as far as I am concerned! Consructive critique is healthy and it is even better when done by people who have some of there own photo's uploaded for public view. Just remember that those that can't, TEACH!

Again I congradulate you on your achievment of POW.

While this picture isn't that great (at least not PoW good), some of the other pictures in your portfollio are. Wonderful pictures in there. Very nice, and good work. Seems like you like to travel.

Congratulations on having this photo selected as POW. I like it -- I think its humerous, beautiful, a nice contrast to the some of the more heavy handed contenders for "POW."

This from "about Picture of the Week":We think it would be inspirational and educational to other photo.net users toshowcase, once a week, a fine example of a good composition, and of course, why photography was invented in the first place..." This picture illustrates, in my opinion, good composition, so it qualifies. Since "good composition" is a matter of opinion, you can have your own opinion about the "goodness" of this composition but bitching about whether or not this or any photo belongs in POW is irrelevant. POW is here to stimulate discussion. If you like it, state why. If you don't like it, state why. But the elves get to choose POW -- we (the readers) don't. So quit yer whining.

To those complaining about "unreal colors" of velvia or any other film -- speaking as someone whose job involves some prepress work, there is NOT a SINGLE film on earth that can record colors the way the human eye sees them so complaints about Velvia's colors being "unrealistic" are just plain wrong headed. No two pairs of human eyes see colors the same either. IMHO, Velvia renders greens very well, much better than a film like EPP, so Velvia is a natural choice for the outdoor photographer. You can debate the merits of velvia to your hearts content -- but if you claim that velvia color is "unreal" then you are stating the obvious -- because EVERY film color is "unreal."

There is "no orange/red rock" in the Sierras? No, but sometimes there is what many of us call "excellent light," some of us call it "the magic hour," some of us call it "sunset," and Galen Rowell calls it "alpenglow." If there were not this photo would be much less interesting, Velvia or no. Kudos to Alfred, kudos to the photographer, and may I suggest that the community forums would be a better place to debate the merits/shortcomings of Velvia, or any other film for that matter. This kind of thing happens far too often. Remember Michael McLoone's excellent baseball photo? How the "you used the wrong film" bit came up there I'll never know. I'm fairly sure that none of my pictures will ever make POW, when I get them scanned and posted that is-- at least not yet, but I believe that this is a good thing because I don't think that I could stand up to the various and certain bizarre criticisms that would be leveled at my work.