the visual journey - gallery ii Flower Canyon

Columbia Hills, Washington. Thanks for commenting. I'd be happy to

answer any questions.

as always....i can smell the scent of nature in your images! ( : and i feel very close to the origin.

Even though everything is pointing to the center it's not distracting. To put it differently the foreground from all side moves you inward to the center. Then the tree and sky take that energy moving it from the center up and outward. May I ask how you held back the sky? The angels are always smiling down on you, you can see their faces looking at you in the clouds. Ry

This one has beautiful balance and flow. Everything in the composition holds together so nicely, and the color rendition is perfect. My question is, how did yo get the foliage in the trees to come through so clearly against the sky? Did you have to do a lot of dodging? Did a polarizer help? Thanks in advance for your insights.

 

Anish

Anish, almost everything you see here regarding the sky and tree was done in RAW. Since the light was at my back, this part of the sky was very subdued and the tree leaves caught more soft light than the flowers, which were in a slightly darker canyon. I used only a 2-stop hard GND which I moved slightly during the exposure to eliminate the transition line. I believe I did a slight mid-tone dodge on the tree area but nothing further.

Thanks for the info, Mark. Very natural and pleasing result...

 

Anish

Simply Awesome!!!! 7/7

it is always soo good to see an other and other masterpiece from you. this is again a worthy part of your gallery. 7/7

Fantastic image. Bravo

Other outstanding image. Cheers!!

Being honest the trees being so central bothers me compositionally but I do love the colour.

David, I understand. I had another image from this evening that I posted on a different forum that had more off-balance elements, but few liked it that way. You definitely can't please everyone.

What a beauty! Everything is hold together to make up a fantastic composition where the little yellow flowers on the foreground -along with the bare branch- enhance the sense of depth brilliantly besides of adding a beautiful touch of color.

Seems a fairy tale! awesome, may be the distortion of the angular distracts a little bit, but colours and comp are fantastic!! regards!!

I like it.

Beautiful!

Marc, spectacular landscape & shot. Superb composition and play of colours.

This image makes a very attractive use of the distortion inherent in ultra-wide angle lenses. Not only do the foreground balsamroot and fence lines converge together at the main focal point, but they appear almost to twist around each other, just before the tree. Nicely seen. The choice to have the focal point almost dead center is unusual for a vertical landscape, but works well here, primarily because there is such strong motion in both the foreground and sky. Compositionally, I think this is one of the best of yours that I've seen.

My only quibble is that the color temperature of the foreground seems too warm for this scene: a tiny bit too magenta and a bit more too yellow. It doesn't quite match the strong blues and magentas in the sky, and its color cast is one that would only be found with an abnormally powerful orange sky glow (which isn't in this scene). My eyes keep wanting to see a somewhat cooler cast, both for a more natural effect, and also to better complement the sky. I worked on an alternative for a couple of minutes to show what I mean. It's attached.

Thanks for commenting, John. Funny you should mention a very strong orange glow, as there was an absolute explosion of orange happening in the sky at my back and right.

Hi Marc,

 

firstly I need to say this image is beautiful as almost always. I am just a beginner so I don't really know all the composition rules and staff like that but your images always made a huge impact to my feelings and I almost every time could feel the atmosphere from the shot - it is amazing for me and I feel like I was there. I have a one question for you if you could help me to figure out how you make such a sharp images - is it due to the camera you are using or could you suggest me some technique you use for focusing ? - do you use hyperfocusing or where do you focus ?

 

Thank you very much for sharing these wonderful images and for possible answer/help.

 

Cheers

Pavel

This is such a great image. I also would like to pick your brain on how you achieve such precise focus. At what point in this image did you focus? I have read that a person should focus on something about 1/3 the distance into the scene. Also I would like to know if you just happen to walk up on a scene like this or was it something you had planned ahead for and were waiting for the flowers to bloom? I would love to see what process you go through in searching for subjects like this. It's beautifully done.

Simply the best gorge wildflower shot I've seen to date. You've got a nice mix, and that sky...PERFECT! And the branch leading the eye...way saweet! My only nit would be that the branch on the left is a wee bit too close to the edge for printing n matting...

Beautiful picture with fantastic colors . Regards Dan

Marc, I love your work.  I'm wondering how you get the yellow in the flowers to 'pop' so much.  In a lot of your work your foreground objects just seem to pop out of the picture so much.  Is this done in Photoshop or do you just increase your contrast?

By adding blue saturation in ACR and also a little selective highlight dodging.  Thanks.