Mighty canyon

Gallery: LandscapePosted November 30, 2011187 views4 comments

Here is another shot from the grand canyon this past summer (I'll be heading up there again soon for some winter shooting, so like the cactus series I'll try not to bore you to death with plenty of grand canyon images). I wish my processing skills were much better, but I think I did a good job trying to convey the drama that unfolded before me. Like the last one, the one thing I was attracted to was the lit up cliffs far in the distance. I was surprised that I was able to get some detail in those cliffs as they are very far away. Also, there is a heavy dust storm that formed at the horizon on the right side which added to the drama and theme of this trip. The light over the canyon was briefly filtered by clouds full of dust that gave off some pretty nice colors. I always see a lot of reds in grand canyon photos, but I was interested to see the purples near the river. I did some dodging near the horizon to bring out the cliffs and did my usual curves and contrast adjustments. Surprisingly, I did not add any saturation to this, I actually lighted it just a bit. I included the large version so you can see more detail in those cliffs. As always, comments and critique are greatly appreciated.

Canon 7d
Canon 17-40mm @ 40mm
f/22
ISO 100
1.6 sec
3 stop grad ND filter
Tripod

Comments

4 comments

Comment posted by Christer Johansson on December 1, 2011 at 8:08 AM

A shot with potential but its seems to dark as it is presented. More light and contrast would improve it a lo I think. I would use TK luminosity masks (http://goodlight.us/writing/tutorials.html) on an exposure like this. Right now it seems to flat.

Registered on October 10, 2009, 50 Posts, 191 Comments

Comment posted by Michael J Greene, on December 1, 2011 at 10:30 AM

I think your processing looks great Peter. Composition feels slightly unbalanced with the river coming into view in the middle of the scene and running out of the image on the right. Overall, I think you did a nice job though. This isn't an easy image to process.

Michael

Registered on June 18, 2009, 86 Posts, 2317 Comments

Comment posted by Peter Coskun on December 1, 2011 at 12:43 PM

Thanks Christer, for some reason it's appearing flat on this site but the actual image does have some nice contrast. It's one of those images that I had to spend some time on processing. I'll take a look at those luminosity masks to see if I can fix this. Michael I can see where the comp feels unbalanced. The river though (for me) helps lead to the lit up cliffs from the rim of the canyon to the horizon.

Registered on October 31, 2011, 170 Posts, 1240 Comments

Comment posted by Lon Overacker on December 2, 2011 at 7:53 PM

Peter,

Like Christer I'd say this one does have good potential. I'm on my laptop so perhaps this is a bit unfair to judge, but I do recall looking at this on the desktop when this was first posted. Anyway, I'll combine comments from both Christer and Michael. I can see the unbalanced comment and I think it's because most of the left appears dark, a little flat and seems a bit empty. How about if you cropped some from the left? I would say maybe even so much as making this a square. That allows the river to frame the bottom nicely and still allow for the light and sky up top. I think also some increased contrast and brightness in seletive areas to punch it up a little. This is certainly worth working on.

Lon

Registered on November 24, 2006, 521 Posts, 19147 Comments