Heaven's Gates

Expansive views from deep in the backcountry of one of the most

rugged and remote wild places in the US, Washington's North

Cascades.

Truly magnificent ! Really amazzing detail , and truly Beautiful Scene make this another excellent image for your Gallery ...Regards from Sunny Florida

I don't think a mountain landscape could be captured any better than this.... Speechless beauty... Mike

 

Amazing and Wonderful picture...can not be better

Regards

Osterman

absolutely stunning marc.

wonderful shot, very good compotition congratulations

Just awesome. Makes me just want ot be there..........simply remarkable. Perfect colors, lighting, depth & composition!!

wow,such amazing scenery,I am wondering why a lot of amercians like to join the campaign of election activities but ignore these beautiful sceneries just around you very closely!

I can see Frodo and friends in the background, great shot, I wish I could view this in larger format

Magnificent picture of an impressive landscape.

Amazing landscape photo captured , tones and composition is excellent ,

Sky is great .

Another beautifu shot Marc. Great composition, I love the way the foreground hills and stream lead your eye into the image where you have the beautiful mountains and sky in background. Living in same area, I have to really appriciate your work Marc. BTW I saw your new website and really like it, well done!

The compressed tonal range is an interesting choice, Marc: almost exactly opposite to the range that was likely present in the actual scene. It's strange to see a sunlit landscape with virtually no true blacks or whites anywhere. Aesthetically, I haven't decided whether it works for me, but I don't think that matters. Clearly, you're not aiming for traditional photographic aesthetics here.

In fact, of all the works I've seen of yours, this one is the least "photographic", in the sense that it is more fantastical than realistic. It's closer to the kind of thing the Hudson River School painters were doing in their landscape work. The landforms (foreground and mountains) in particular, look like they were rendered in oil paint: I'd be curious to know what you did in post-exposure processing to achieve that effect. Photographically, it's kind of what I imagine the pictorialists would have done, if they'd had color film, made strong use of pre-exposure techniques, and avoided soft focus. Very far afield from your Velvia days.

Critically: as a "painting" (but even more so as a photograph), the sky lacks the brilliance I associate with such scenes, and I think this causes the rest of the scene to appear a bit muddy. More literally, the clouds look too dark to me, especially along the top right. I think that rendering that area more brightly would provide a stronger counterpoint to the foreground, and perhaps bring it out a bit more.

All that is to say that you've got the beginnings of something quite new and different here. I've seen many landscape photographs that were digitally processed to resemble paintings, and occasionally, the results are quite effective. What I have not seen before is a combination of this with the perfect sharpness and extreme detail that can come only from a camera. I hope you'll do more of these.

I thank you for the comment, John. I think maybe you're overanyalyzing a bit, but I get your point and I do see the comparison in style to that of painters - believe me, if I could paint like this, I'd be done with photography. I absolutely love landscape painting and it influences my work in both the light I seek out and my processing.

The original file looks pretty similar to this though. Of all my last fifty or so posts, this one may have had the least work done to it. There was little more black or white than this in the original. I think what gives it that painterly effect is the filtered light sprinkled here and there over the whole scene - painters often utilize this effect (mackerel skies will do that for a landscape). The only adjustments I made to this were to brighten up the foreground a bit - mainly the stream, grasses and the shadow area of the lake at left. The soft light here is quite dreamy, but if you saw a bigger image you'd see the highlights on the peaks are very strong in places.

I'd like to even out the dodging a bit more on the grasses at left....hmmmm... looking at that now I might want to go back and rework that a little. It was maybe a 1 or 2 minute job in PS to get this as it is here though.

 

Btw, overall this is way too dark. My mistake on the presentation there. It looked better on my black website, but it's just too muddy here.

Your response to John's post raised a question for me: Should images be processed for ideal viewing against a light background or a dark background?

It is a wonderful landscape, when I look at this image, specially on the foreground, it looks like for me that went trough a heavy PS work, I see some place where the light shines on and it is hard to believe that it natural, the little's rocks near the water is dark and the green grass that is not far from this having such light? Maybe I am wrong on this, if so forgive my bad interpretation, Your composition is outstanding, All the best friend.

Another fine example of landscape photography. I don't know if its my monitor, but I see plenty of highlights and shadows, in fact for my taste it could go a fraction darker. But again that could be the background. I wish PN allowe you to select the BG colour like some other sites.

 

I like how you control local contrast, which really brings the scene to life.

 

 

Nick

wonderful

The best words for this wonderful shoot. excelent and vibrant colors. good DOF to the gate. Well done. Regards