Below the Pueblo Range's western crest, looking east

A serious critique request here. There is something that's not sitting

quite right for me about the color in this image, and I can't quite put

my finger on what it is. If someone out there has some insight, I'd

much appreciate it.

A rather subjective request.............. Not having been there with you, I have no idea what you saw. As purely a viewer (of the larger image), I find the (almost) emerald green scrub to be somewhat out of context with the rest of the image. Obviously it was there 'cos you captured it (smiles).

My knowledge of PS is about the same as yours but I tried to balance the colours using the dark and light sliders. Does this come closer to what you have in your "minds eye"?

Thanks for the opportunity

Regards

Thank you for taking the time to do that, Graham. I'm not quite sure what you mean about the "emerald green scrub". Do you mean the shadowed area? Yes, now that you mention it, I think this has too much green and is too light (the result of playing with the Shadow/Highlight adjustment). The true emerald green, sunlit, is an aspen grove, and the colors presented here are reasonably close to reality.

 

The main thing I don't like is that the sky and the coloring of the sunlit areas don't seem to complement each other. This is partly a result of the original slide being about a 1/3 stop overexposed, I think.

Okay, here's what I think: too little sky contrast and too much cyan, too yellow in the sunlit areas, too light in the shadows. A version I'm much happier with: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=15912992.

Fabulous scene - here is my stab without knowing what the scene looked like..

Thank you, as ever, for your insightful help. Our tastes appear to be pretty similar here, once again.

Simply beauty! Best regards http://newpictures.in/nic/1/1x1.jpghttp://newpictures.in/nic/2/1x1.jpghttp://newpictures.in/nic/3/1x1.jpg

Actually, I very much like your original posting, John.  I think it is the quality of the light--either early morning or late afternoon--with the wonderful gold tones.  I really like the overall composition too.  The eye is easily led from the FG lichen-covered rocks through the gun-sight notch and then out across the basin and ranges to the horizon.  Some seriously rugged and stark country!  Well done!  I hope all is well with you and yours and that your summer is fun-filled.  Cheers!  Chris

I'm with Chris:  I'm hard-pressed to find anything "wrong" or "off" regarding the color in your original.  We're all guessing because we weren't there, but this landscape is not outside my range of experience.  I thought perhaps some of the rocks in the upper right might be a bit yellow, but that could easily be the nature of the rock and the late (low angle) light.  This is a harsh, rugged landscape and is quite beautiful because of those attributes.

Thanks, all, for the kind words and helpful analyses.

I think the things I found dissatisfying about this first version both stemmed from a "too much of a good thing" approach to post-exposure work. The first is the shadow detail: there's too much of it. As much as anything, I try to make my photographs match my experience of a scene, and one of the things that makes light at the end of the day so dramatic is the strong contrast that I (and others, I assume) experience. I often find the sun blinding in early evening, certainly precluding a simultaneous attention to shadow detail.

The second shortcoming I indicated before in my "too yellow" comment. While I agree that light at this time of day has a strong yellow/orange color and exceptional brilliance, it is a common mistake in post-exposure work to bring this out by simply pulling down the midtone curve in the Blue channel (or pushing it up in the b channel, if, like me, you work in Lab space). Done sloppily, this tends only to shifting every part of the scene toward a yellow cast, rather than bringing out the yellows and oranges, while leaving other colors relatively close to their original form. I think this is what I did in the version of the image you see here, and getting it right is the reason I like the second version I posted.

HI John- I see the blue sky & assume the other colours are mostly true for this time of day. When I view your fine image, I see a wonderfull place to be although it must have been a hard slog, but well worth the effort The various colours are fascinating,have never seen colours like this before.We would love to trek to this place, unfortunately,Vi & I had our days in the sun but are now entering the shady areas Thanks for showing us this wonderful place. Best Regards-Ross.

John-Forgot to check off the anonymous box. Ross