Gatineau Park

[Manfred M]

We spent a few hours in Gatineau Park, near Ottawa Ontario this afternoon taking in the fall colours. We headed to the Carbide Willson ruins (a former fertilizer plant from the early 1900's).

Magic hour at Little Meech Lake; the water was so calm that is was almost a perfect mirror. The small circle of where a fish had just touched the surface is a bit of a give away as to where the water is:




Carbide Willson Ruins:










Fall colours from the Champlain Lookout, looking towards the Ottawa River




A maple tree being "kissed" by the light from the setting sun

[Clive Kirby]

I like the carbide wilson ruins.

[Manfred M]

One more shot of the Carbide Willson ruins, about half way down the hill.

[Clive Kirby]

Nicer shot. The ruin fills the frame more, but the waterfall is still in shot. I like it.

[dubaiphil]

You could have some fun light painting those ruins at night, making a really atmospheric scene.

Nice set, Manfred. These are the kinds of leaves and water images I like.

[Mike Buckley]

All are very enjoyable but the last one is quite special. Thanks for sharing them!

[kdoc856]

Great set, Manfred. Fantastic settings beautifully photographed.

[Nancy Moran G]

Hard to pick a favorite! All are spectacular.
Any hints on your set up or pp?
Nancy

[Manfred M]

You could have some fun light painting those ruins at night, making a really atmospheric scene.

Nice set, Manfred. These are the kinds of leaves and water images I like.

It might be fun, but following a 2 km hiking trail through the woods at night, up and down hills, scrambling down steep inclines; perhaps not a lot of fun. There are some other more accessible ruins; a former prime minister collected these and had them reassembled at his summer home in the park; I might have to try that sometime...

Unfortunately the fall leaves are a very short-lived event; usually not more than a week or two. Strong rains and winds stripped a lot of the leaves off yesterday.

[Digital]

Manfred, very nice photogaphs. I like old ruins,


Bruce

[mstrozewski]

One more shot of the Carbide Willson ruins, about half way down the hill.

I like this angle. Looks ominous and makes me want to see more of a longer exposure on the water to slow down time. (if you get what I mean) I haven't finished the first cup of coffee so I might not make sense But good shot!

[Wavelength]

I really liked these images very much; the colorful landscapes are awesome!!! The distortion of the building debris give them a new life; they are all excellent

[Manfred M]

I like this angle. Looks ominous and makes me want to see more of a longer exposure on the water to slow down time. (if you get what I mean) I haven't finished the first cup of coffee so I might not make sense But good shot!

Thanks Mavourneen - the ruins were all shot with the f/2.8 14-24mm Nikkor lens on a full-frame camera, at or near the 14mm setting. The downside of using this lens is that I can't use use any filters one it as it has a permanent lens hood and no filter threads. I know Lee makes a kit to use filters on this lens, but have read that it introduces fairly major vignetting below around 20mm.

The other problem was that I was out on the nicest day of the fall for looking at leaves and the site was absolutely crawling with people; a good dozen or two getting into shots, so not great for long exposures. I was hoping to do a pano of the site couldn't get the 30 seconds or so of clear shooting without people that I would have needed (I spent close to 2 hours trying).
The other

[Manfred M]

Hard to pick a favorite! All are spectacular.
Any hints on your set up or pp?
Nancy

Thanks Nancy - The ruins were all take with the ultra-wide angle f/2.8 14-24 Nikkor on a D800. No filters (the lens won't take any). The landscape and tree shots were taken with the f/2.8 24-70mm Nikkor with a polarizer, again on the D800. ISO varied from 100 to 400; i.e. my usual shooting style of using the lowest ISO value I can get away with. I do this to maximize the colour depth and dynamic range and minimize noise. The shot of the lone tree and the last shot I posted are cropped, while the others are not. The third shot is a composite of two stacked images; the highlights were at least partially blown in the sky and the windows, so I took a shot that was shot at 2 stops lower, aligned it and masked out the sky and the windows to let the shot underneath show through.

In PP, (ACR), I work through the various tabs and make some tweaks:

Basic tab -I generally leave the exposure and contrast along, but choose a clarity and vibrance setting between +25 and +50, depending on the look I want. When I am looking at the fall colours in trees, I might use the saturation slider in the same range, rather than the clarity for the fall leaf pictures as I often want to bring out the reds and oranges. I will lower the black until I just get start to lose shadow detail. I will also lower the whites to bring out the contrast in the clouds (if there is any). I will adjust the shadow detail, up or down and do the same with the highlights. I generally always increase the shadow detail a bit more than required, and then dial things back in Photoshop.

On the tone curve tab, I choose parametric and start with a slight "S" curve to enhance the contrast. although sometimes I will do something else. This is all done by eye, based on how the image looks to me.

I will do a tiny bit of pre-sharpening before I open the file, using the amount and detail sliders just to sharpen things up a bit. I do this at 100% magnification. In the lens corrections tabs, I enable profile correction, using the profile tab and remove chromatic abberations on the colour tab.

I then move on to the HSL/Greyscale tab and choose the Luminance tab. I will dial down the aquas and blues to bring out cloud shadows and detail. I don't go back all the way to the left, but adjust both to bring out the clouds; at this point then often look too pretty and need some more PP work later on.


My next step is to bring the image into Photoshop CC for further surgery. I love the various content aware tools and use them, as well as traditional techniques to remove "blemishes" and other "stuff" that I don't want in the final image.I will straighten walls that have the keystone (or reverse keystone) look with the skew setting under the transform tool.

I generally use layers with layer masks and clipping masks to further work the image. The clouds and sometimes the water that I did in ACR are often "too pretty". I want the contrast and the shadow detail, but sometimes a more subdued colour, so I will add a hue/saturation adjustment layer. but insteal of using the Master setiing, I will go into the blue and cyan channels and bring down the saturation to where I want it. This gets rid of the areas that are over saturated, but leaves some amazing shadow detail if it was present in the clouds. Depending on the colour components of the image I may either paint in or paint out the colours on the mask, using (usually) a very soft brush, with an opacity of around 25%. I will build up the mask until I get the effect that I want.

If the image is still too bright, I add a levels adjustment layer tone things down and may paint in / out specific details.

The final step is to add a vignette. I add a blank layer on top of everything else. I use the elliptical marqee tool and lay down a marqee. I will adjust the size, shape and position to suit the image. I invert the layer and then refine the mask by applying a large feather (usually 500 - 700 pixels) and use the bucket tool to fill the outside with black. I then dial back the opacity (usually 25% - 40%) to create the vignette.

I do an output sharpening (to taste at 100%).

This is pretty well the sums up the core workflow I have been using lately. I generally do this all in 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the complexity of the image. I generally work in either ProColor or AdobeRGB work space, and resample to sRGB for displaying on the net. I leave the final images as jpegs at full quality and save both the psd and jpg files.. I use Flickr to store the images I have here on CiC and link there.

I hope that this gives you a bit of insight into my PP workflow.