Highway 163-the lonely road

[barrettfb]

Highway 163 by BarrettFB, on Flickr


How do you like the composition?
Is the PP work distracting?
What about the colors?
Is the photo dynamic enough?
How could I have taken the shot better?

Camera Canon EOS 7D
Exposure 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture f/22.0
Focal Length 70 mm
ISO Speed 400
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire

Complete EXIF here

[danbaileyphoto]

Yes, good composition, and the colors are good, but they could be improved by waiting for better light. I don't see any problem with the your post production work. One thing that I notice, though, is that it's not 100% straight. You can fix this in post as well.

Overall cool shot, hopefully it's one that will add to your arsenal of learning and improving at outdoor photography.

[barrettfb]

Sorry, what isn't straight? I think I used the 7D build in level to verify. It may be an optical illusion because of the landscape. If you mean the road lines, yeah, I noticed that too.

As far as lighting, I had to shoot early in the morning (around 7:00 a.m.) because the road goes southwest. If I shot later in the day/evening, the sun would be facing me. So how would I compensate?

Sorry, don't mean to be defensive, just trying to analyze with what I had.

[Krusty79]

Ahh, Monument Valley - I hope to go back there next year. I like the composition and colors. I also thought the horizon was a little tilted. It looks a little higher on the right side. I couldn't find a ruler around me here at work to check, though.

You shot this in the morning? It looked to me like it was shot in the middle of the day. I did look at a histogram of your image and the pixels are clustered in the middle of the histogram. That tends to dull the colors. I used this technique by LeeR on the Curves screen to adjust for that - problem with Curves. I hope you don't mind. Here's what a simple adjustment does:

[IMG][/IMG]

[danbaileyphoto]

Looking at it again, I think you're right, it must be an illusion because of the angle of the landscape in the distance.

[barrettfb]

That looks really good Krusty. yeah, the colors seem to pop out a bit more after editing the curves there.

Yeah, I couldn't believe it looked like that so early in the morning. You can't really tell, but you get some sense of it in this picture. notice my long shadow.


IMG_3400 by BarrettFB, on Flickr

[Krusty79]

I thought that adjustment might help. I still have barely scratched the surface of what can be done with curves. I guess the desert lighting has the effect of looking like it is mid-day, even in the a.m.

When I viewed a close-up of your image, I noticed a couple of white pixels that look blown out, but they are in an area that looks like it should have color. The most noticeable was to the left of the road, in the area a little before where the road curves to the right in the distance and the greenish area is about to transition to the brown rockier area. There is another one up and to the left of that one. However, I don't see them in your shot with the shadow, so I'm not sure what caused that.