Learning Landscapes - Gorgeous scene = Huge Headache

[Brownbear]

Thank you Manfred and L. Paul for taking the time to comment and advise. Truly appreciated.

Manfred on my next attempt I will do just that. And yes, I've learned from this set of images that post-processing doesn't help and it is way to time consuming.

L. Paul beyond the trees were hotels and houses which I was trying to avoid but I can see that I should have moved somewhere else so I could include more trees and avoid the buildings. I'm sure I will find a similar vista somewhere, someday and I will remember these pointers. Thank you.

[pnodrog]

Hi Christine I had a fault with the image upload and then got interrupted with a phone call so the post was done over a period of about 30 minutes just to confuse everyone....

I think it was said in another thread that after rushing home and viewing your latest photographs that seldom are as amazing as you hope it pays to reassess them later. Often I find an image that I was initially disappointed in that with a little PP develops into something I am reasonably happy with. It is only very occasionally that I have a photo that "has it" from very first time I view it and usually I know that it will be when I take it.

[Brownbear]

Thank you for sharing L. Paul.

I am working on improving my post processing skills and I hope to improve my skills in this area, a lot this year.

And I'm also learning not to trash all my disappointments, however for this image (and a few similar ones) too many things are not right. I will save one of the shots with a rainbow in it and take a look at it again next year.

Hi Christine I had a fault with the image upload and then got interrupted with a phone call so the post was done over a period of about 30 minutes just to confuse everyone....

I think it was said in another thread that after rushing home and viewing your latest photographs that seldom are as amazing as you hope it pays to reassess them later. Often I find an image that I was initially disappointed in that with a little PP develops into something I am reasonably happy with. It is only very occasionally that I have a photo that "has it" from very first time I view it and usually I know that it will be when I take it.

[Manfred M]

And yes, I've learned from this set of images that post-processing doesn't help and it is way to time consuming.

I wouldn't say that. Post processing can bring a lot out of an image; for example.

Original image:





Same image after post.

[Mike Buckley]

I think that this a classic case of our eyes / brain seeing things differently than a camera records them. Your senses saw a wonderful vista, complete with sounds, smells and colours. The camera just saw the scene as it was.

This reminds me of a story one of my favorite wine sellers told me about a customer of his. His customer explained that wine sold in foreign countries always tastes better than the same or similar wine sold in America. He asked for specifics and learned that the person who normally leads a stressful life at home in America had consistently gone on vacation to foreign countries, tasted wine at villas overlooking magnificent vistas that included aromatic gardens and drop-dead gorgeous sunsets with pleasant music playing in the background. "Of course," said my wine seller. "How could wine not taste better in that situation?"

[Brownbear]

Hi Manfred,

I was a little hasty when I commented. What I meant was that one needs to take a good image to start with, for the photo to be worthy of time spent on it. ie; too much work need likely means it is a not a worthy photo as in the image I posted here.

Thank you for sharing your beautiful image and post-processing example. This is exactly what I need to learn to do well, bring out all the beautiful colours and details starting with a raw image.

I wouldn't say that. Post processing can bring a lot out of an image; for example.

Original image:





Same image after post.

[Brownbear]

Thanks for sharing this Mike... Indeed, true for the wine but truly the vista I saw was far more beautiful then the one my camera (me) captured... The light and colours are just not the same. (:

This reminds me of a story one of my favorite wine sellers told me about a customer of his. His customer explained that wine sold in foreign countries always tastes better than the same or similar wine sold in America. He asked for specifics and learned that the person who normally leads a stressful life at home in America had consistently gone on vacation to foreign countries, tasted wine at villas overlooking magnificent vist
as that included aromatic gardens and drop-dead gorgeous sunsets with pleasant music playing in the background. "Of course," said my wine seller. "How could wine not taste better in that situation?"

[FrankMi]

...truly the vista I saw was far more beautiful then the one my camera (me) captured... The light and colours are just not the same. (:

I'm going to stick my neck out a bit Christina, and based on my own frustration with epic scenes like this that just don't come out looking like what I thought I saw, I'll try (with Foot-in-Mouth disease) to bring your image closer to what you may have seen.

When I run into this issue it is so very frustrating that the camera doesn't seem to capture what I saw and the emotions that came with that experience. When I try to correct for the shortcoming in post processing I have to rely on my poor memory for image aspects like color, contrast, vibrancy, and so on. Sometimes the viewers will comment that the result is too much this or that. In the end, it is what I feel "I" saw that I'm trying to recapture. With that in mind, I'll offer some suggestions for techniques you can apply to a situation like this. If nothing else, perhaps it will provide you with some tools to experiment with.

When I start an experiment like this I'm not as concerned about perfection as I am in finding a way to move in the right direction and in that respect, the more difficult the image is, the more I can learn from it. As they say, "A smooth sea, a skillful mariner never made".

As I'm working from a post processing perspective and my goal is to learn how to improve that image that is available, I'll leave the reshoot comments to others at this point and start with the processed image you posted.

You said that for you, "the photo was about the dramatic sky".

How do we add drama to a sky? Without worrying for the moment whether or not the result is realistic, we can warm the image (as others have suggested) to make the clouds come toward you (cool colors tend to recede). On the easiest ways I've found to get an delicately effective warming is to use the Brilliant Warm preset in Topaz Labs 'Adjust'. Another easy way is to use the Overlay Layer - make a copy of the image and in the Layers panel click on the dropdown that shows the Normal layer and choose Overlay. The neat thing about the Layers panel is that you can control from 0 to 100% the amount of effect the option can provide. This version of your image is at 100% but that can easily be dialed back to suit your tastes.



In this version I also lighted the foreground and applied a touch of Local Contrast Enhancement with Dodge and Burn to bring back a bit of detail so as to help offset the massive sky.

I didn't want to crop the image and loose any of the blue at the top, but for a landscape, the current narrow aspect ratio feels confining to me. As an alternative, I used Free Transform to stretch the Aspect Ratio to approximately 16x9. For some images, any compression or stretching can be a disaster but a scene like this can usually handle it fairly well as nothing feels odd about the wider view. By applying these two basic changes we end up with something that has moved in this general direction.



Hopefully it moves the image in the direction of what you saw that morning?

[Brownbear]

Hi Frank,

Thank you for sticking your neck out and for taking the time. Truly appreciated and very helpful.

Yes, your image moves the image truer to the day and the sky, but the colours are not correct (of course only I know that).

I have not deleted all the images yet, so I will save a few of them for an exercise in post processing, and try your suggestions, perhaps on another photo with more foreground. I have some other similar images with dramatic skies from a few years ago that may be better that I will also try this on.

This view is one that I can't try again for likely another year, as it was photographed in Mexico.

Thank you Frank!

I'm going to stick my neck out a bit Christina, and based on my own frustration with epic scenes like this that just don't come out looking like what I thought I saw, I'll try (with Foot-in-Mouth disease) to bring your image closer to what you may have seen.

When I run into this issue it is so very frustrating that the camera doesn't seem to capture what I saw and the emotions that came with that experience. When I try to correct for the shortcoming in post processing I have to rely on my poor memory for image aspects like color, contrast, vibrancy, and so on. Sometimes the viewers will comment that the result is too much this or that. In the end, it is what I feel "I" saw that I'm trying to recapture. With that in mind, I'll offer some suggestions for techniques you can apply to a situation like this. If nothing else, perhaps it will provide you with some tools to experiment with.

When I start an experiment like this I'm not as concerned about perfection as I am in finding a way to move in the right direction and in that respect, the more difficult the image is, the more I can learn from it. As they say, "A smooth sea, a skillful mariner never made".

As I'm working from a post processing perspective and my goal is to learn how to improve that image that is available, I'll leave the reshoot comments to others at this point and start with the processed image you posted.

You said that for you, "the photo was about the dramatic sky".

How do we add drama to a sky? Without worrying for the moment whether or not the result is realistic, we can warm the image (as others have suggested) to make the clouds come toward you (cool colors tend to recede). On the easiest ways I've found to get an delicately effective warming is to use the Brilliant Warm preset in Topaz Labs 'Adjust'. Another easy way is to use the Overlay Layer - make a copy of the image and in the Layers panel click on the dropdown that shows the Normal layer and choose Overlay. The neat thing about the Layers panel is that you can control from 0 to 100% the amount of effect the option can provide. This version of your image is at 100% but that can easily be dialed back to suit your tastes.



In this version I also lighted the foreground and applied a touch of Local Contrast Enhancement with Dodge and Burn to bring back a bit of detail so as to help offset the massive sky.

I didn't want to crop the image and loose any of the blue at the top, but for a landscape, the current narrow aspect ratio feels confining to me. As an alternative, I used Free Transform to stretch the Aspect Ratio to approximately 16x9. For some images, any compression or stretching can be a disaster but a scene like this can usually handle it fairly well as nothing feels odd about the wider view. By applying these two basic changes we end up with something that has moved in this general direction.



Hopefully it moves the image in the direction of what you saw that morning?

[Geoff F]

Christina, I tried a couple of very quick simple edits, which are very similar to what Frank did.

Using a layer and Soft Light Blend mode, which is a little less harsh than using Overlay but they give rather similar results.



And using a little bit of Local Contrast Enhancement.



Both starting from your first image.

You can, of course, combine a number of different edit options depending on exactly what you require.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Geoff. I like your 2nd version the best of all, so far as it is the truest to what I saw, albeit everything is over processed, now.

Here is my editing try using the guidelines provided by Frank and you. (which I actually figured out how to do) This has turned out to be a great post processing learning day for me. Thank you.



And then I went back to an older image of the same spot from a couple of years ago which included more foreground and was zoomed in. Processed in LR and no filters needed. And then I started playing with the cloud using curves and then I decreased the clarity on the clouds for a dreamy feel, but the colours were still not right so I changed it to black and white, and I quite like it! Thank you.