Patagonia - C&C please

[davidedric]

I'm reworking some old jpegs taken with a little Finepix. C&C would be very welcome. I think they are worth persevering with, but I'd like other opinions

Ta,

Dave

[Dusty]

The image looks fine to me, maybe crop some of the sky away.
Dave.

[Mike Buckley]

This definitely makes me want to go there.

Just a couple of suggestions: The image has a bit of a blue cast on my calibrated monitor. Reducing it will probably add some clarity and warmth. The cloudless sky doesn't add any helpful information to the image, so crop just above the mountain peaks.

[rpcrowe]

Lovely image... I agree with Mike about the cropping and the removal of a bit of blue. Adding some warmth results in three definite areas of the image, sky, mountains and foreground...

[pnodrog]

Interesting proportions (almost square) for a landscape photo. I like the abrupt rise of peaks from the lakes but I do agree that not so much sky is needed.

The colour cast is a cyan blue rather than just blue on my monitor.

[Downrigger]

I also think the temp is on the cool side - my D600 shoots "cool" (on Auto-Temp) on bright days such as shown here and I'm not sure what to do about it. I'd rather get the right hues in the first place than have to adjust color temp in PP all the time.

I agree that's a lot of sky, but I very much tend to do the same thing, not sure why, and my critics routinely carp about it. I've sort of gotten used to the idea that the right amount of sky is less than I think should be there, unless there's something happening there that adds to the composition.

[Digital]

This is a fine photograph.


Bruce

[Mike Buckley]

my D600 shoots "cool" (on Auto-Temp) on bright days such as shown here and I'm not sure what to do about it.

You could buy a more recent model. Nikon has been making models ever since the D7000 if not earlier that includes two Auto White Balances. Auto1 produces the same results of a camera that only has one Auto function. Auto2 produces a warmer white balance.

[TonyW]

This is a very nice view and if you have others like this they are worth persevering with. I went to Patagonia about six years ago and have some pictures that I took with my old Canon powershot camera. I have one or two of the same view. I might dig up a couple and post them even though they don't have the same quality that a more modern camera could achieve.

I did not have any blue sky in mine. I quite like the expanse of blue you have. I wouldn't worry about the crop police.

[chauncey]

Aah...what difference would having different white balance settings make if you shoot in RAW?

[Mike Buckley]

Aah...what difference would having different white balance settings make if you shoot in RAW?

The difference is the same as when shooting with JPEGs -- that the white balance configured at the time of capture might not have to be changed during post-processing.

[davidedric]

Thanks for the suggestions. I seem to have an aversion to cutting out a blue sky - probably it's living in a place where it rains two days out of three. I've reposted below, but I'm not sure that personally I prefer the tighter crop.

You are quite right about the blue cast, which I think is only really noticeable in the snow. I have tried taking it out with the LR sliders, but I didn't much like the overall effect on the scene's colours. I have done an alternative version using Viveza with a control point on the snow, adding Warmth and reducing the blue channel a little. I'd be interested to have any comments.

Also, I am far from an expert on pp. If anyone would like to post their adjusted version, I would be grateful to see the comparison (my monitor is calibrated).

First image with LR sliders:






Second image using Viveza:

[Mike Buckley]

Your first revision looks too green for my taste.

You mentioned that the blue cast in the original is only noticeable in the snow. Ironically, that's the one place that it seems natural because we're used to seeing it there as a natural characteristic of snow. I noticed the blue cast throughout your original immediately upon viewing it.

You might or might not like this version, especially if you've gotten used to the original. I didn't spend any time trying to get it just right. Instead, I quickly used the rock cliffs of the mountains as a neutral point until I came upon a color balance that seems reasonably neutral and natural to my eye. There is still a slight blue cast in the most distant mountains as a by-product of the small amount of haze; I could attend to that separately but didn't take the time.

By the way, I'm using a calibrated monitor and Firefox. If you're not, the colors may appear different on your system than on mine. I've gotten to the point that I trust only Firefox as a browser for serious color viewing.

[davidedric]

Hi Mike, thanks for taking the trouble to post your image. Funnily enough, I did use the mountains as a neutral colour for the first image, but didn't much like the result. I'll have another go.

Incidentally, I routinely use Chrome (which is allegedly colour managed)as my browser, for reasons nothing to do with photography. So I tried viewing the images side by side in the two Chrome and Firefox. There were differences - Chrome seems to give a more saturated feel - but that isn't exactly a scientific experiment.

Dave

[Mike Buckley]

I posted an image a long time ago that included a shadow on black felt. I couldn't see the shadow using Explorer. Dave couldn't see it using Chrome. It looked fine to both of us using Firefox. Hardly scientific, but certainly convincing at least for that particular photo. These photos in your thread appear the same on my system whether using Firefox or my cataloging software.

[chauncey]

IMHO, the definition of futility...posting an image on the internet and having it look correct to all of us.

[Downrigger]

Thanks Dave and Mike for the show. I have had a good time working through this thread and comparing the solutions presented. Dave’s Viveza version and Mike’s version preserve the (I think natural looking) blues and greens from Dave’s original nicely, but Mike’s achieves an almost selective warming of the foreground tundra, relative to Dave’s Viveza, which seems needed, and helpful.

Back to the question of getting color temp right at the time of exposure… Even though shooting in RAW, I wonder whether a need to manipulate color temp in PP compromises the goal fidelity somehow. I have an intuition – easily incorrect – that the less amplitude (settings/sliders) we have to apply to manipulate an image, the more likely it is to be successful in terms of veracity. Can one achieve the same result after PP with an image shot way off correct color temp, when compared to a twin image captured at a correct color temp?

[Mike Buckley]

Can one achieve the same result after PP with an image shot way off correct color temp, when compared to a twin image captured at a correct color temp?

If the exposure is "accurate" in both images, you should be able to get the two images reasonably close. Even so, I doubt that a side-by-side comparison will render them exactly the same.

The reason I mentioned exposure is that two completely different white balances will require different exposures. To demonstrate that, place the camera on a tripod in a situation with controlled light. Get all the settings to render an "accurate" exposure and release the shutter. Then change the white balance to something very different (change nothing else) and release the shutter again. Notice that the exposure might be so different in the second photo that you might even call it "wrong." At the very least, the histogram will be quite different, at least in the context of this discussion.

[davidedric]

IMHO, the definition of futility...posting an image on the internet and having it look correct to all of us.

Hence my signature: Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?