Sand Dunes

[chauncey]

One of my friends herein suggested that I give this a try...I took some wind blown, snow sculptors and tried to turn them into a desert shot. This is a learning experience, be brutal with improvement suggestions whether it be color/composition/whatever.


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[HMW12]

Sounds like a really interesting exercise. I find the colours to be a bit too golden yellow and the texture a bit too uniform for a desert landscape - but I have to confess to never actually having visited the desert Also there is nothing to indicate any scale so I find myself wondering what exactly I am looking at? Not that that is necessarily a bad thing though. My first reaction was this was some form of alien landscape.

[Kris V]

Can't exactly pinpoint why, but something in the sky seems off.....
Interesting concept though - from the arctic to the desert.

[Mike Buckley]

I love the adventuresome approach! However, if it's important for the image to look like sand dunes, that would never happen for me because of the sharp, high points that would never be formed by sand.

If you like the basic compositional element of the strong lines and the sharp points, make a large batch of meringue and have a field day forming the shapes, lighting them and photographing them. If you do, please be sure to PM me to ensure that I don't accidentally overlook your thread.

[chauncey]

make a large batch of meringue and have a field day forming the shapes, lighting them and photographing them

Sterling idea...gotta put that on my to do list.

[Manfred M]

The last dunes I saw looked like this:




The great dune at Sossusvlei, Namibia.

[Ken MT]

Chauncy - The yellow sky tends to take away from the photo.
Manfred - Mine from Sossusvlei looks like this. Those are people climbing up the ridge!

[Shadowman]

I like the composition and from a close distance the sky does look a bit pinkish, but when you view from a distance it blends in very well. I would play with the background a bit to add additional faint patterns.

Very nice.

[Manfred M]

Chauncy - The yellow sky tends to take away from the photo.
Manfred - Mine from Sossusvlei looks like this. Those are people climbing up the ridge!

Nice shot Ken; I wanted to climb, but caught something on the flight over and was down with a fever while we were in the Sossusvlei area, so just about the only thing I could do was drag myself out of the truck to take pictures. We were there an hour or so before sunset, and were the only people around. We made it back to the park gates with about 10 minutes to spare before they closed them.

[benm]

I like this photo a lot. A nice abstract.

[lukaswerth]

Great idea, if you ask me. I like the abstract approach which is nicely underlined by the monochrome quality.

Lukas

[chauncey]

Lets deconstruct the image a little, first off...the sky defiantly sucks...it's not a desert sky. I can fix that as we're supposed to have clear blue skies today that will be shot.
Secondly is the color of the sand, that is a work in progress. Doing a Google of desert images shows the sand colors all over the place, which brings into that old question "what color is the "correct" color".
The shape/detail of the mounds themselves...that's going to take some more thought because I sure do like them. BTW, there are three separate layers of mounds under that sky image, should have titled it "Made in Detroit".

Comments on anything.

[Mike Buckley]

The shape/detail of the mounds themselves...that's going to take some more thought because I sure do like them.

I like them also. It's calling them sand dunes that I don't like because I've never seen sand or photos of sand that holds that shape. Perhaps title the image "From Another Planet," in which case I can't refute the accuracy of the image.

[Downrigger]

Yes - a "pattern" image that is nice. I guess my problem with concerns trying to get my hands around scale, though as Mike points out, some of the steep and sharp spots suggest it is not full scale wind-blown sand. But interesting nonetheless.

[chauncey]

Methinks that I was trying to add in too many peaks, anyway another attempt by the methamphetamine addicted blind squirrel.


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[Mike Buckley]

That one works really well!

[Downrigger]

That's a rich set of hues = really pull you in and hold you.

[chauncey]

As an FYI thingy, in that last image I changed the snow color into sand color within LR...doing it that way causes a lot of pixilation at 100% viewing that I didn't notice until after posting that image. In the initial image the color was altered in PSCC and no pixilation resulted...interesting.

[Kaye Leggett]

I like the second image very much.

I wonder whether you could do a half and half, sno and sand in the same image or am I just being daft ?

[chauncey]

Kaye, hope this helps...I put this together so I would remember the steps I took.
Far left is the RAW image>then minor LR adjustments>basic PS stuff>faux HDR using default settings(reduced highlights). Once ya figure out how to do it, it's no big deal.





I used a color checker tool along the way to keep track of my RGB numbers.