Mountainscape, Fuerteventura

Dear Carsten, what first stands out is the sharpness. No doubt, your camera can produce it. But how do you bring it to the screen? Have you seen the small bird on the top of the mountain?

And how do you manage again and again to have the landscape mirrored in the clouds? You must have enjoyed the solitude up there while waiting for the right light and composition. Well done. Karl

Karl, you must have 120% vision ;-) On top there is something like the head of a bird, see the original size photo crop. The only kind of birds there were crows, and kind of raptors. I guess this was a crow.

To bring the sharpness to the screen is a technical challenge, I was not happy with the until recently when I discovered a tool called "SAR image processor", that can downsize your images with the Lanczos 64 algorithm, you get downsized images that dont need much sharpening then. When you have a super sharp original like this one, a 50% 0.3 point smart sharpening of the LAB luminance channel is the final step. If you dont want to twiddle so much with postprocessing you can use the Photoshop bilinear algorithm for downsizing, much better than the standard bicubic, you get about 90% of the best possible result.

Its kind of obsession for me to look for order in chaos, you are perfectly right. Sometimes I have to wait for a while, here I was about half an hour or so until the right light happened (for a few seconds. Kind of decisive moment).

Cheers

Carsten

A very nice mountainscape, Carsten. B/W is well suited for the scene, one can concentrate more on the shapes and patterns. The mirroring of the cloud and conic mountain Karl mentioned is a nice extra. Having learned your sharpening approach from your I can confirm that it is among the best options available. I use a slight modification of the workflow: downsize with bilinear, then convert to Lab and "Sharpen" the Luminosity channel. If the sharpening is too much, I use Fade Sharpen to the degree I deem realistic. Can you tell us what, in your experience, is better about the Capture One Pro compared to PS CS4 having B/W conversion in mind ?

Thanks a lot for your thoughts, Peter. I think the difference is not Capture One versus CS4 direct to B&W, the difference is C1 to B&W versus C1 to color TIF, then color TIF to B&W. I have CS3 and dont use its direct B&W option because I just dont like the ACR interface. Lightroom or Photoshop for direct DNG/ RAW to B&W should do the job also.

Richness of B&W tones and interesting shapes, moody also!

PDE

What bird?  You guys must have superman eyes.  Anyway its a nice shot.  Thanks for posting it.  Alan.

A superbly composed B&W Carsten! Interesting landscape. This area appears to be quite arid? As previously mentioned the sharpness is sensational without any artifacts present ( that my old eyes can see). An excellent image!

All the best,
Neil

Sharpness in your images is almost a given, an element of expectation.  That said, this one should be viewed 'Larger'.  It gets even better.  The first thing that hits me is the tonality of the clouds and the second, the pyramid hill in the foreground for it's sharpness and graphic impact.  Way off in the valley I see signs of humanity with a man on a park bench reading the paper.  (sorry Karl, couldn't resist)  More seriously, though I love B&W for it's emphasis on the shapes, tones, & textures, I think I'd like to see a colour version of this one.  My bet is that there are a lot of subtle colours there to be savoured.  Always a treat to view your latest. Or, for that matter, to go back through your posts & rediscover your past successes.  Best, LM.

Dear Len, I can even read the headlines of the paper. ;-)

Dear Carsten, what you write about sharpening, does this apply for color as well or is it specific for black and white?

Thanks. Karl

I can nearly climb the mountain, especially when seen large...the (DOF) valley behind is beautiful ( even I don't see the letters in the newspaper...;-)).The tones are rich as well as the sharpness( already mentioned),I like the imaginative diagonal line that leads us to the valley and to the clouds scene.

It is a good opportunity to wish you  happy holidays, and fruitful coming new year.

Thank you all for stopping by ! Sorry for the late feedback but I was quite busy recently. Karl, this sharpening is applied for my color and B&W work, too

Fabulous light and composition. I like the tonal range also.

I've just been catching up on your more recent postings. (Was out of contact for several weeks while attending the arrival of a new grandson!) As others have said, the level of detail in your photos is exceptional, but the tonal range and smoothness is equally pleasing. And, of course, the all-important ability to find order in chaos, as is evident here.

Thanks for occasionally sharing some tips about how you achieve achieve such a high technical standard in your work.