Flux

The post-processing is undoubtely excellent. The right-side rocks might (maybe) be a little bit more darker? (I mean, by looking at the shadow direction, it seems that they should be shadowed).

The water flow is impressive.. it seems like milk, as in many photagraphs you posted on the web. I would say this is a characteristic sign of your images.

Well done!

Amazing image. I'm not sure I'm understanding the horizontal exposures combined with the 3 vertical frame stitch? Once you made the stitch, were you somehow able to then combine a horizontal image of the sky, and match it up with the combined stitch?

The green on the RHS surely isn't the most realistic representation of light direction, Marco - I agree. I just wanted all the green areas to glow. I think I get away with it in images like this, because although light is still directional at twilight, it's more evenly distributed overall. Maybe I should burn down the rock highlights a bit on the right, though (just now saw that you said rocks and not grass).

The flow could certainly be a lot better! Check out Ryan Dyar's and Floris Van Breugel's renditions of this scene to see what the water looks like in the spring. The milky look is simply a byproduct of not having a polarizer and not having a body good at higher ISOs to freeze texture/motion in the water. It looks good here, and in my previous Cape Kiwanda image, but I'm not a fan of the look in my Triple Falls images. I need to buy a polarizer.


Michael, yes - I stitched the three verticals, then warped/transformed the stitched canvas back to proper proportions (each frame of the stitch was very different in terms of angle and placement of the landscape's features, since I was so close to the scene, shooting at a wide angle).

Then I cropped back to the proper 3:2 ratio, then downsized the stitch back to the native resolution of the D7000. Since it had extra resolution from the 3 stitched frames, but not so much extra detail after the warping, this brought it back to a good level of sharpness, and made it easier to blend with the horizontal images. The sky was easy to match up to the horizon because the horizon is so well-defined, but it would have been more difficult with things like trees on the horizon.

The reason I knew I'd need a separate sky exposure, other than highlight preservation, was that the light was disappearing quickly, to the point where each successive frame was different - the sky would (and did) come out very uneven and splotchy in the stitch as a result, even after matching the frames' exposure as well as I could in Adobe Camera Raw.

Another excellent image, Alex

I love the comp, and the concept! I think the sat is a bit too much, particularly the greens and magenta cast on the rocks. At this time of day, colors are muted. But I understand that super-saturation sells, so have at it, I just personally prefer a realistic look, it's more interesting to me.

I love the mood and the color in this image myself. Nice job!

Thanks for the input, Stan. I should mention the comp's not mine - pretty much the standard from this iconic location. Not much else you can do from this viewpoint for a horizontal, as you're very limited on perspective. (Arrived here just as light was fading, so I didn't have time to hike down to a lower level.)

Believe it or not, the rock color in particular is pulled back from the raw exposures - there was what Sean Bagshaw calls "salmon" light on the landscape. I brought the green areas back toward green via targeted white balance adjustments, to overcome the overall magenta cast given by the light, and to provide a bit of contrast between the grass and rock via color.

I'm never motivated by what sells, which is why you won't see my portfolio full of blue skies and white clouds over rolling fields of wildflowers. I wouldn't call the image "super saturated" at all - maybe just a bit too much red and magenta overall. I gave it an overall red/magenta/yellow bump at the end, since my initial process looked too cyan/green/blue to my eyes upon finishing the image. It's hard to tell for sure though, since we perceive colors in a relative way and I was staring at it for hours. Just need to come back with fresh eyes in a couple days to be sure.

I agree that color perception is relative, it's something you definitely consider every time. I also have no doubt the RAW was crazy colored, depending on WB that will happen quite frequently in low light of course. The real question is how to present the colors, and of course that's personal choice. To clarify, I didn't mean to imply that the saturation was ridiculous--by "super" I just mean literally "more than" , in this case "more than I would expect given the light/conditions" I also didn't mean to imply that it "sells" in the sense of making lots of sales, I just meant that colors attract people's attention and are appealing to most viewers--that's no surprise, just look at (usually) the photos that garner the most comments and views in this gallery, 9 times out of 10 they're strong colors. Poor choice of word on my part Basically all I'm saying is I think the image would be stronger muted--in fact I personally would probably like a B&W better, for me its not the colors that are important here, they're not part of the story since if I were there with you I wouldn't be wowing at the colors. But that's just my take and i'm often in the minority on it. Keep up the good work, Alex

Really nice composition

The color you've captured here is killer. I love the blue/purple tone in the water, and the surrounding cliffs. Also, the dual eddy is pretty cool looking. I actually wouldn't mind seeing the dark tones and mid tones a hair darker. I think it might give a bit more contrast to those cliffs in the background, and the lower right corner. Fantastic work as usual Alex.

Impressive, stunning, surreal. I'm divided about whether it would pop a little more if it was ever so slightly brighter. Not sure would be something you'd have to see side by side I think. Still a killer image!

I like this a lot, Alex. The color palette is interesting and moody - really gives this a cinematic feel. Your composition is pleasing as well.

Truly and amazing image, Alex. Just love the colors, textures, and overall flow of elements here.

Alex, a lot of work in this one...cheers. I do agree that the right side lighting is not natual looking. I as well prefer a natural look. But you do what you do very well. Keep at it.

Love the softness of the light in this.

I am trying to figure out how you could divide this frame into 3 and still get a nice continuous look to the swirling water! Gorgeous image! I love the dark glowing quality.

I'm a little confused on the following:

You say you did 3 verticals for the landscape. But you needed only ONE horizontal for the stars and ONE for the sky. But a vertical isn't 1/3 the width of a horizontal so something doesn't add up.

It's a beautiful piece of art - I agree with what Stan has to say Re: colors. The swirl is a nice bonus and the image has a dreamy feel to it.

Eirini, I made sure to get almost all of the water in one of the three verticals, so that I could get a consistent pattern. Plus, I guess it was swirling pretty consistently, since PS was able to stitch there with no problem.

Luke, when you do a panoramic stitch, there's a ton of overlap between frames - this allows Photoshop to find features common in each frame and align them properly into one large scene.

The following was detailed above, but I'm not sure I was clear:

The resolution of the landscape stitch, after PS spat it out and I transformed it back to proper proportions and cropped it 3:2, was indeed more than a single horizontal (it came out to about 6,000 pixels wide, and the D7000 is about 4,900 pixels wide natively).

However, from the warping of the scene to get it looking natural again after PS's stitch job, that 6,000 pixel image wasn't tack-sharp anymore on a pixel level, so it worked to my benefit sharpening and then downsizing it back to the 4,900px native width of the horizontal frames I had taken. It was then pretty easy to get the sky to line up where it should.

Sorry if that's confusing. Nothing fishy going on here, just overcoming the limitations of my equipment. None of this craziness would have been necessary if I had a 14-16mm lens on full frame. Give me a D800 and a 14-24, and most of these multiple-exposure images I shoot become doable in a single exposure via the angle of view, dynamic range, and high ISO performance available with that equipment.

And I still don't think the color is that ridiculous, honestly. Check out almost every other image of the falls out there for more saturation: here. I agree that the RHS is a bit bright, though - at least where it should be shadowed.

Personally I must say I'm not inclined to blend night and twilight skies together in such a fantastical way but it does invoke an extra kind of surreal element in these oft-captured landscapes and a new look can't be a bad thing. Nice processing work throughout, however. You certainly have an eye for the post-capture work and that's one of the biggest challenges people face these days as we're now faced with more creative options we've ever had before.

Thanks, Marc. I actually agree, since I'm starting to think, looking back on my collection of twilight images, that half of them didn't need the stars in the first place. I've never blended two different skies together, only added the white points with the lighten blend mode, a la Floris. I started doing that in images with little to no sky action as a way of shooting high-quality "night" landscapes at low ISOs on the cheap bodies I owned - still being able to make a more unique image when I didn't get a good sky was the motivation, along with a desire to convey that sort of surreal twilight hour.

Then I did it with images with nice lingering-pink twilight clouds, and it just kind of became my thing when I saw the surreal look. I recently realized that the stars just end up being distracting and extraneous in some of the images, where the surreal feel is mostly due to everything else about my processing.

I'll probably end up removing the stars in some images and updating my portfolio, or at least toning them down and making them tiny and feint (which is how they actually were at some of these scenes at the moment the sky/landscape exposures were shot, even with cloud color lingering). Some of my posts here on NPN were processed well before I started having doubts, but I just wanted some feedback so I threw them up as they were.

This is just so, so cool Alex! I love your twilight images and this one is no exception.