most recent "Miles From Nowhere"

The last of my exposures for this day. Of course, the sky was only getting deeper in color, so in order to marry the sky with the foreground and avoid some serious noise, I exposed the foreground at 67 seconds and the sky at 10 seconds. I then increased the contrast and decreased the exposure for the foreground to make a natural blend, all the while preserving all the details, right down to the cattle grazing along the road. The sky also needed some fine tuning because the deep reds tend to posterize by blowing the red channel. I double processed in ACR, the second output having a reverse curve, and then blended that in to the brightest areas. This results in a scaled back version from the in camera file, meaning I have reduced saturation and contrast, not increased. The color and vibrancy are accurate because all of the channels are preserved. My dialogue here may seem defensive. I have had several lengthy discussions with other respected photographers who feel that todays image making is over-processed, specifically over-saturated. I have seen many images that appear unnatural in color or vibrancy and so I partially concur. Conversely, I have seen many contemporary photographs that possess a higher degree of luminosity, saturation and vibrancy than what is considered normal to the purist, yet I know these qualities are accurate and do exist in our natural world. For sure, it can be difficult to resist strengthening these qualities in an image when current times allow the digital photographer to be in the driver's seat. Film, for the most part, did not allow for that. I contend that all good photography through history has been at least 105 percent of what was truly accurate, meaning all of the best image makers have creatively infused their own forms of embellishment. My analogy would be that all non-fictional movies have some form of dramatization. If they were just purely recounts of actual events as they happened, in many cases they would be average, if not boring. I know for sure that a movie of my life would need an excessive amount of dramatization to make it even interesting to myself, yet it's been a damn good life no less!!

"Miles from nowhere. Guess I'll take my time. Oh yeah, to reach there"

This Cat Stevens tune has played in my head over the years while hiking

or climbing. I don't hike or climb so much anymore, but it still applies. The

Larger version reveals more than can be seen with the default preview. Let

me know your thoughts!

I won't pretend I understand the tech stuff above because I don't (yet) but it works, the shot is beautiful, best regards.

Beautiful piece Mark.   Thanks for sharing the techniques used in processing.  Aloha.

Very amazing capture, even the back lit mountains and the ones on the foreground maintained sufficient details, thats what makes this image a real remarkable one while the moving clouded sky and its colors add a great credit to the composition here.

Thank you for sharing it and wishing you all of the best.

a stunning photo. i know from my experience how difficult is to bring back in a picture what you saw there, without being partially over- or/and underexposures, and, in such dark scenes even lots of noise. you done the technical part perfectly. the composition and colors are excellent too.

Another excellent piece of work Mark,regards

I like, especially the choice to keep the foreground dark, as I'm sure it was in the experience. As someone who also tends toward vivid color, I've also thought a lot about the degree of truth in landscape photography. What I've come to is this: "Truth" is only partly in the recording of what was really there, but in art, it is not and should not be a purely journalistic standard of purity.

Pasted-in flying geese, oversized moons, and nonexistent sunsets are clearly on the wrong side of truth, though they may have their place as alternate forms of art. But as a landscape artist, there's more to it than just conveying what was "really there". You are also conveying your experience of the moment. When I've been present for scenes like this, my experience nearly always includes an exaggerated experience of color but also of the subtle detail of last light on areas that are otherwise too dark for reading. In landscapes that I consider overdone, these elements are pushed beyond anything that I myself would have experienced, and so I do not believe the image as "true".

This image, by the way, does ring "true" for me, particularly the choice to push the low-light contrast of the hills. As I said, those last-light highlights are one of the things that always strike me the most about dawn or dusk.

Thanks Mark, Dominick, Rashed, Zsolt, Harry and John! I am glad to see this image get some respect. Alot went into it's reproduction, primarily in postpro. I have seen similar images here on PNet, but in most cases, they are single exposures that allow the sky to cross the "preserved" threshold, with neon like reds. All the while, the shadow detail is pulled from the very bottom of the histogram in an effort to open the foreground from near silhouette. This results in "tar-like" globs of pure black scattered across the landscape. I can identify these results because I have encountered them myself many times. I wanted to convey a dark foreground that was of my recollection; nearly dark, but clean. In order to do so, one must capture a wide histogram and then condense the info, thus discarding pixels while squeezing the histogram into it's appropriate luminosity. It's easier and more prudent to discard unneeded info than to try and pull it up from where it doesn't actually exist. A closer look still reveals a few specks of black; simply my black point and nothing more. For me; the way it should be, for others interested; the way it can be!

Mark, this isn't nowhere; it's right here.  You have a fabulous image.  I really like the shapes and the way that the winding road, the folds in the mountain, and the shapes of the land define this image.  The sky and colors are superb and dramatic.  Viewed large one can really appreciate this image.  Great work.

This is also amazing.

BR / Volker