High Uintas Landscapes

[wrench]

I learned a little about spot metering over the past several days and wanted to see if I could apply what I learned. I took a day trip to the Uinta mountains yesterday. There is still several feet of snow at the higher elevations, so I couldn't do anything more than take a few pictures from near the road.

I've noticed that in the majority of my shots, I have a tendency to clip the highlights if I am not careful. So for this series, I set my camera to spot metering and tried to set the brightest point in the scene at 2 stops above correct exposure. Let me know what you think.

Bald Mountain Pass Overlook by Big00Ern, on Flickr
This image seems a little dark to me, but I really like the sky. I'll see if I can tweek that a little more.


Provo River Falls by Big00Ern, on Flickr
The red rocks on the edge of the falls may be a little over saturated. Might need adjustment.

And of course, I couldn't help but do a couple of monochrome conversions. I think the waterfall came out nice, but the view from the overlook may be a little dark.

Provo River Falls Monochrome by Big00Ern, on Flickr

Bald Mountain Pass Overlook by Big00Ern, on Flickr

[Rebel]

Hey Emie, I like the first two shots in colour - the black and white don't work for me sorry.

The highlight look good to me

[Manfred M]

Ernie - while you have not clipped either of these images, I find that they are a bit muddy looking. The second one looks a bit underexposed. You might not want to clip in capture, but you can certainly pull things out a bit more in PP.

The "acid test" for me on images with fairly pristine snow is to look at it and if it looks light gray, rather than white, I see this as an issue to fix in PP. I checked the snow in the second image and the highest white value I could find is in around 200.

Here's what tweaking the black point and white point do for the image.

[Rebel]

Ernie - while you have not clipped either of these images, I find that they are a bit muddy looking. The second one looks a bit underexposed. You might not want to clip in capture, but you can certainly pull things out a bit more in PP.

The "acid test" for me on images with fairly pristine snow is to look at it and if it looks light gray, rather than white, I see this as an issue to fix in PP. I checked the snow in the second image and the highest white value I could find is in around 200.

I knew you'd comment on the snow!

You are right of course

[Manfred M]

I knew you'd comment on the snow!

You are right of course

I might have written something like this one CiC before..

I find one common issue that a lot of people seem to miss is clipping black and white values to the point where it becomes an obsession. I fully support minimal highlight clipping during capture, as we do want the data, but a lot of people seem to think that it applies to output as well and it mostly doesn't. The only time I really watch things on output is when I prepare an image for print.

[Rebel]

I might have written something like this one CiC before..

I find one common issue that a lot of people seem to miss is clipping black and white values to the point where it becomes an obsession. I fully support minimal highlight clipping during capture, as we do want the data, but a lot of people seem to think that it applies to output as well and it mostly doesn't. The only time I really watch things on output is when I prepare an image for print.

I never used to consider either when I was shooting I'd just fix it in Photoshop when I got home, but I started getting prints done recently and realised the more you process it the worse the print! You may have noticed my PP has scaled right back

Also I've stopped photographing the beautiful and now go for interesting and weird

[Manfred M]

but I started getting prints done recently and realised the more you process it the worse the print!

That depends on the printer and paper selection, to a great extent. Most commercial printers work in sRGB and if you have vibrant colours, the conversion can often be quite disappointing. If you have access to a printer that works in AdobeRGB, I think you would find that that this would be less of an issue.

All that being said, I would agree, PP work for printing needs a far more delicate touch than for displaying on a computer scree,

On the other hand. you are busy with B&W street photography right now and that's a totally different game, especially when printing. I find you have a far wider latitude in paper selection when working in B&W.

[Rebel]

That depends on the printer and paper selection, to a great extent. Most commercial printers work in sRGB and if you have vibrant colours, the conversion can often be quite disappointing. If you have access to a printer that works in AdobeRGB, I think you would find that that this would be less of an issue.

All that being said, I would agree, PP work for printing needs a far more delicate touch than for displaying on a computer scree,

On the other hand. you are busy with B&W street photography right now and that's a totally different game, especially when printing. I find you have a far wider latitude in paper selection when working in B&W.

I keep most of my street photography in colour at the moment, I haven't posted any of it on here recently but I will soon.

I don't print myself and have only used tacky commercial printers as an experiment - but its something I want to look into in the near future.

[wrench]

Ernie - while you have not clipped either of these images, I find that they are a bit muddy looking. The second one looks a bit underexposed. You might not want to clip in capture, but you can certainly pull things out a bit more in PP.

The "acid test" for me on images with fairly pristine snow is to look at it and if it looks light gray, rather than white, I see this as an issue to fix in PP. I checked the snow in the second image and the highest white value I could find is in around 200.

Here's what tweaking the black point and white point do for the image.

Thanks for your input! I like what you have done with it. Did you simply bring the whites up and the blacks down, kinda like increasing contrast, or am I totally off here?

You are correct that I really focus on not clipping the highlights, during capture and in post. I guess I just thought that was correct...

[wrench]

Hey Emie, I like the first two shots in colour - the black and white don't work for me sorry.

The highlight look good to me

I often try a monochrome conversion just to see if there is something there. Sometimes it just doesn't work. I personally like the waterfall in B&W when the image is viewed on a large enough monitor to really see it, but I will admit the small size that I posted here and on Flikr leave something to be desired.

The B&W conversion of the overlook just doesn't work I think. I'm not sure if it's really worth the time and effort to really bring something out.

I appreciate your thoughts.

[Manfred M]

Here's what I did. Photoshop CC 2015 - Levels. The histogram is from the image you posted on Flickr. This screenshot shows where I set the black point and white point. If you find the image is too dark or too light, shift the midpoint to where you like it.







As for the B&W image, the black point and white point adjustments are pretty well mandatory. In a B&W jpeg, you only have 256 shades to work with (0 - 255) and you need all of them to produce a decent image. In this shot I set the mid-point / gamma to 0.90 as I wanted to darken the image a touch. Remember this is a black and white image, not a dark gray and light gray image!

[wrench]

Ah I see now what you did! Thanks for taking the time to show me. I use gimp but it has a very similar tool to adjust the light and dark.

Thanks again!

[IzzieK]

#1 image will be nice if cropped about 1/8th from the bottom showing more of the sky and a little bit of foreground. I like the B/W version of it.

[Shadowman]

Nice set.