Sun Setting on Alternative Energy Idea

[NorthernFocus]

We were having another unusually colorful sunset and winds were calm so the water was reflecting the color nicely. The volcanoes were all hidden in cloud so I shot these motionless windmills instead. A few years ago one of the Alaska Native corporations took advantage of state and federal funding incentives to build them. Of course our electricity rates went up

These two shots were made at the same exposure settings but different focal lengths on an 80-400mm zoom lens. But they were processed differently. In the second shot I forgot to tweak the WB and tone down the highlight on the RAW file in LR. Once converted to TIF I was unable to get the same WB color nor was I able to recover as much detail in the sky. Rather than re-processing it I thought I'd post it as-is for instructional purposes(i.e. RAW rocks!).

[Manfred M]

An interesting statement, Dan and yes, good instruction on focal length, raw data and beautiful lighting.

The cool temperatures don't seem to hurt either as they have knocked any thought of haze causing moisture out of the air. That is a nice, clean shot. That heavy band of clouds is a bit unfortunate, as it forces a forces you to crop a bit more off the top than might be desirable.

On the other hand, we do know from experience that mother nature loves messing with photographers....

[Donald]

Aside from enjoying the images this is, as Manfred suggests, a very good tutorial on the subject of white balance. Thanks, Dan.

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks for the comments, gents. It's interesting how the camera's electronics dealt with the scene. To the eye the scene was pretty much orange and purple. Intuitively it seemed like the auto WB would overcorrect for the bright yellow/orange, i.e. assign a low K value. But it did the opposite. Though my mind's eye enhanced the bright colors, area wise the scene was actually dominated by cloud/shadow. I cropped away a good bit of cloud with the 16:9 crop. With the dominant purple (i.e. blue and magenta) in the scene the camera's auto WB cranked up the K value to 6900(to correct blue) and cranked the tone to -21(green side of scale to correct magenta). A good example of how intuition can mislead you when thinking about how auto settings will respond to a scene.

[Wavelength]

Awesome, colorful....I love that flamboyance

[Sergio M.]

Dan,

compelling images for the reasons given above. Even when comparing the differences in WB, I still find them both very appealing.

Sergio

[bnnrcn]

Hi Dan . I like both of them for different reasons . The first image is nice as a sunset photograph. IMO the second one would make a nice poster with those colors

[Shadowman]

Nice edits, I'd remove the plane in the second just to keep set consistent.

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks for the comments, folks. I was wondering when someone was going to mention the plane

[Wavelength]

Ouch; why did not you raise your level to bring the plane in the golden background? or did you want to hide it that way ?

[NorthernFocus]

Ouch; why did not you raise your level to bring the plane in the golden background? or did you want to hide it that way ?

Hard to believe the pilot could be so inconsiderate

[Mike Buckley]

In addition to the other comments, I'd like to mention the very high level of detail retained in all areas, so much so that I would be willing to bet that that was easier said than done.

Hard to believe the pilot could be so inconsiderate

He knew you could easily move his plane into the bright area.

[NorthernFocus]

In addition to the other comments, I'd like to mention the very high level of detail retained in all areas...

Part of my ongoing 30 day evaluation of the Piccure sharpening software.

[JBW]

as the engineer on the Crosby used to say: good theory bad practical. The windmills not your shots.

[NorthernFocus]

They actually picked a good spot for the wind farm. It's rarely as still as in these shots. Just in general wind turbines are maintenance intensive machines. Expensive to build and operate and poor availability factor. And unfortunately policy makers who create the incentives to build them have no concept of how they should fit into an overall energy grid design. In some cases they can be (environmentally) counter productive depending on the configuration of the overall grid that they are connected to. But if sure feels good seeing them spinning away collecting all that clean, "free" energy