others Alaska: Denali NP: Polychrome Pass: Dall Sheep

I haven't been doing too much pretty photography lately so I went back and found some from earlier this year.

I wish the background was a little more vivid, especially with those nice colors in the middle, but I know there's only so much you can do with lighting some days. Nice composition.

When the background became more vivid, the sheep sort of disappeared into it. My intent was keep them separate and more immediate to the eye.

 

The image became very flat and uninteresting when I enhanced the BG.

Really tough to find the right balance of contrast & saturation but this is nice!

Great capture!

Beautiful picture!

Excellent Shot!!

I think the sharpness of the background is perfect for the mood of the picture. I first thought I wanted the sheep themselves to be sharper, but the longer I look the more I like them just the way they are.

I am attaching a small portion of the frame for your perusal. Unfortunately I shot this as a large smooth JPEG so it's not as sharp as it might be. On the positive side, the image as displayed is full frame.

Wonderful shot!! I was there this summer ... it rained both days that we went through Polychrome Pass. This is gorgeous!!

It was rainy and gray the very next day. We've been there twice and both days on the buses were beautiful but the other days in the area were overcast.

Try using unsharp mask to reduce haze. The trick is to use a very large radius (~ 60), a very small amount, and a zero threshold.

 

Check out what this does to your picture (follow link if picture does not appear inline). I think it makes the sheep stand out more and makes the colors more vibrant.

Wonderful Picture!

 

There is a trick that I tried on the picture that I've been using a lot recently. I learned it here:

 

http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast-enhancement.shtml

 

The article recommends these settings for the unsharp mask filter in phostoshop, though in this case I only used an amount of 15%

 

Amount 20%

Radius 50

Threshold 0

 

 

The sheep are brought out even more distintly, though they may have ended slightly oversaturated.

 

This works very well considering that almost everything is in shadow here. I think the original is much better than the more saturated attempts. I like this shot Fred.

Thanks Jim. I tried many different combinations of BG/FG relative densities. It's always a personal call and I'll stick by what I posted. The Unsharp Mask techniques from Michael Reichmann's site are good but they don't help much on an image that was shot as a JPEG initially. I have other shots of the sheep (shot as RAW files) where the light is from camera right but this one has a lot of drama and feeling of place to it so I posted it.

 

The interesting thing about the light in Alaska is that the sun goes around in a circle more or less overhead in the summer so if you want an image with some particular direction of the light all you have to do is get there at the right time of day. It does dip down and dim down somewhat as it heads north but the sunrises and sunsets go on for hours. I hope to get back again sometime.

 

Interestingly, the sheep are getting fill light reflected from the pale beige cliffs behind the camera. It might not be enough to rank as perfect but it helped a lot. They were a bit too far away for flash fill.

Wonderful image Fred. Check out my "companions" photo in my single photos folder. Your creatures look like rams, mine were goats.