Wildflower Bloom at the Alabama Hills

I was blessed here with great clouds, flowers and no wind. The

contrast range was too great for the 3 stop ND grad, so i had to

lighten the foreground a bit in PS. otherwise, no manipulation.

Critiques welcome.

 

-Anish

Stunningly beautiful...

Great light, very good composition, beautiful colors. I liked the use you made of first and second planes. Very nice work!

Good!

Beautifull and great scene of natural wonderness!

Wonderful use of foreground wildflowers to add great depth. The sky is absolutely magical!

Beautiful effect, it makes me want to go there. thanks jana

Goodlooking picture. What surprises me that most of the foreground is lit, but the hills are totally dark. This must be because of the backlighting effect. I was also wondering if this is also caused by the GND filter. Good photo.

Thanks for the comment. The dark rocks are due to the GND filter. There was no other way to make this shot work, other than to combine exposures in PS, and i don't enjoy doing that.

Thanks again,

Anish

Very beautiful photo, I like a lot the colours of the cloues

beatiful shot

This is a beautiful shot. Nice composition too. However, I wonder if using a soft edge ND filter would have made the transition on the rocks a little less pronounced. Would you have lost color in the flowers below or detail in the clouds above?

Well, the short answer is that I did not own a soft edge filter at the time. I do now, though, and I find the transition area to be quite large. In this case, although a soft edge would have made the transition line less obvious, all of the flowers except for the foreground plant would have been significantly darkened, which I would not want. All in all, without resorting to digitally combining multiple exposures, I feel this is the best compromise. Thanks for the comment.

 

Anish

Really great photo! I hope to be able to take photos at this level soon. I'm pretty new at this and learning a lot. I have heard so much about ND gradient filters. I love taking pictures of landscape scenes like this. Do you think I should add one or more ND grad. filters to my collection? If so, what should to start with?

Thanks for the comment. ND grad filters are essential for capturing images like this (unless you like spending LOTS of time on your computer). I have a set of 4: 2-stop hard and soft edge, and 3-stop hard and soft edge. To be honest, I use all 4 of them regularly. If I were to start building a set, I'd begin with 1 hard edge and 1 soft edge. Whether you choose 2 stop or 3 stop is really a matter of preference, as not everyone agrees as to how "bright" a shaded foreground should be. I would recommend, though, that you buy high quality filters, such as Singh-Ray. You definitely don't want a filter that adds a color cast as some of the lower cost brands tend to do. Good luck!

 

Anish

Great Shot! I love foreground in this image and of course the lighting is ideal.

Anish, this is a really beautiful image. The blackness of the rocks doesn't totally detract from the beauty of the image. Still you might be able to play with the filter in the field like rocking the filter back and forth or slowly raising it up and down.

Wow, I just knew this was a HDR photo when I first saw it. Very impressive use of the neutral density filter. Congrads.