Mesa Arch at Sunrise

Looking forward to reading your comments...

 

Thanks,

 

Don Paulson

This looks like the "burning bush" Did you see Moses? Great photo

Excellent. A fresh look at the arches. Great angle, set-up color.

I like the shot. A bit too much light for my taste... nothing really stands out.

 

Great lighting - you were at the right place at the right time. The orange glow on the underside of the arch is beautiful.

Nice shot. A different angle than mine, but much more colorful. Very good.

Interesting color. I did some clicking to demonstrate my suggestion.

Thanks, Pawel. I like the way you deepened the color. Would you mind telling me the steps you took?

Don,

 

Fantastic colours, but for me the composition is lacking. The bush in the centre is uninspiring and competes with the lit rocks - it looks like a better shot would have been produced if you had moved a few feet to the left - was that possible?

Not too long ago PN started recompressing all gallery uploads here is the thread about rendition of color - http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00814r you might find it interesting.

The uploaded image seemed to have v. little detail in highlights in R so I borrowed some from G and blended in. RAW recovery of shadows and highlights is based on similar idea.

 

Thanks for your comment Mark. Yes, it certainly was possible to move to the left - that is where most photos of this arch are taken from. In fact the other Mesa Arch photo in my Southwest Portfolio was taken from that position. Take a look and compare. There are so many images of this arch at sunrise that I was trying for something different. I agree about the bush, but I liked the color from this angle better. This photo was recently published in a book titled Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color (by Leatrice Eiseman) to illustrate "earthy brown" hues.

I'm sorry Pawel, I'm afraid you lost me on the Photoshop steps you took in your example. Could you put that in layman's terms for me? I figured that the lack of details in the orange/red areas was simply an over exposure problem with little I could do about it. That is interesting to read about Photo.net compression - thanks. I compared the photo.net image with the original on my computer and could detect no differences...

Don - when you're thinking in terms of film yes, detail is gone but since we digitize our images, oftentimes it's benefitial to think the way computer is "thinking": in chanells. First thing I do is evaluate each chanel separately, detail missing in one may be present in another. Let's pretend that we have only 3 chanels. R is missing detail but G and B have plenty. I didn't write down exact steps but: usually it's better to avoid B (all kinds of noise) so most likely I've blended something like 30% of G into R, placed it on the top as a new layer and blended in multiply, than adjusted transparency, masked shaddows a little.

Pawel: Yes, I see what you are saying now. Thank you for taking the time to explain. This is a technique that I have not tried before and it looks like it could be quite useful. I'll give it a try on my master file...

You're most welcome Don. Please drop me an email if you need more detailed explanation. Regards

I find the bush a bit in the way.