Frozen waterfall

[PhotosByFerrell]

So here i need help, and a critique would be great. Here i took a photo of a frozen water fall Up in Breckenridge Colorado. I have tried to post process this photo in many different ways and cannot seem to get a quality result. Can you all help me and show me what you got and tell me how you do it?

[windrider86]

What is it that you are trying to do? What look are you going for? What have you done so far?

[PhotosByFerrell]

Originally Posted by windrider86

What is it that you are trying to do? What look are you going for? What have you done so far?

Something to make this photo more stunning. Something to bring out the green trees and the frozen watrerfall. This photo is so much better in person and want to bring out the amazingness in it...

[Rentham]

This is the scenario the LAB colorspace master Dan Margulis calls the Canyon Conundrum. His book about it is here: Amazon.com: Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace (9780321356789): Dan Margulis: Books

From a review of the book:

The Title ‘Photoshop LAB color’ simply states what color space this book is concerned with, it is the subtitle however; ‘The Canyon Conundrum’, which enticed me to read more. The books explains the fundamental disconnect between how the human visual system works as opposed to how a camera records a scene. This difference is intensified when photographing a subject such as the Grand Canyon, where the human visual system sees a variation of colours but the camera only records dull tints. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting home and looking at your photos only to find they look nothing like what you saw. This book explains why this is the case and also how to work around this problem using Photoshop’s LAB mode.

Tutorials on photoshop, how to photo shop, photoshop video tuts, download free photoshop actions, matt norris - blog - The Canyon Conundrum

[vsa]

I don't know about stunning but I was bored so what the heck.



Bunch of stuff with curves, levels, color balance and my good ol' friend mr. Gradient Map.

Here's the .psd file for you to take a look what was done.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3534005/dps/...-waterfall.psd

[Doug Pardee]

Putting on my Bad Cop hat...

Originally Posted by PhotosByFerrell

This photo is so much better in person

Welcome to landscape photography. Landscapes are, almost by definition, glamorous: what you see on the scene is so much more than the reality that your camera will capture. You might see some magical vista, but your camera just sees earth, vegetation, and water.

Petteri Sulonen wrote a little treatise he calls "Why Most Landscapes Suck". He notes:

Grand landscapes evoke awe, and awe is a very difficult emotion to convey. The only art form that can really pull it off is cinema. ... This doesn't stop landscape photographers from trying. Yet almost invariably, the awe-inspiring view turns into a cutesy little postcard. Capture or display format doesn't really help -- using a view camera and making huge prints or projecting huge slides simply yields huge cutesy little postcards. ...

Photography comes into its own at the human scale. ...

Some landscapes do have the power of evoking emotion: joy, exultation; a reflection of the face of God. Their secret is the same as for any other photography. They have meaning.

What is the (human) meaning of your frozen waterfall, as you see it?

In the absence of an answer, forget about "amazingness". You'll probably have to be satisfied with a cutesy little postcard. Which really isn't bad at all; it's just not amazing.

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by PhotosByFerrell

Can you all help me and show me what you got and tell me how you do it?

Here's one quick cut at it:



Done in CameraBag 2 beta-105d with this filter:

• Brightness 40
• Exposure 61
• Wedding 100% Remix=-105
• Saturation 68

[GTAltman]

Here's my take on it.

A few exposure changes, a tad of white balance, a dash of curves and gradients.

Not sure if better is the end result, but it is a different take on it.

TFS!

Gary
6746303393_4b6484b816.jpgLandscape.jpg

[PhotosByFerrell]

This is almost what I was aiming for! Great job! Is there anyway to bring more out of the ice? This is way more then I could get out of it. I have never used camerabag... Ill have to try it.

Originally Posted by Doug Pardee

Here's one quick cut at it:



Done in CameraBag 2 beta-105d with this filter:

• Brightness 40
• Exposure 61
• Wedding 100% Remix=-105
• Saturation 68

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by PhotosByFerrell

Is there anyway to bring more out of the ice?

It's probably possible, although realistically you'd likely want to take the image into a more capable editor. This was a real quickie; I probably spent three or four minutes coming up with this. I'm not completely happy with it, particularly the blue fringing around the trees. That's being triggered by simultaneously blowing out the sky a bit while increasing the saturation; it's hard to lighten the trees without introducing this fringing.

CameraBag 2 isn't a full-blown editor, and it doesn't offer any way to work on just part of the image. It's not really the tool you'd want to use to continue trying to enhance the waterfall. But at least this seems to give you a vision of where you're trying to go.

Originally Posted by PhotosByFerrell

I have never used camerabag... Ill have to try it.

I did a review of CameraBag 2 on this forum the other day: Review: CameraBag 2 (beta)



Here's an attempt in LightZone, going somewhat over-the-top on the waterfall:



This involved a complex stack of operations (listed from bottom-up):

• Hi-Pass Filter, Radius=0.6 Gain=0.02 Blend=Midtones
• Tone Mapper, Radius=250, Gamma=2.2, Detail=0.8, Blend=Soft Light
• Unsharp Mask, Amount=20, Radius=50, Threshold=20, Blend=Color Dodge, Opacity=30%
• Hue/Sat, Vibrance=100, Luminosity=-10
• Hue/Sat, selection=waterfall, Saturation=50
• Hue/Sat, selection=sky, Luminosity=-14, Blend=Mid+Hilights
• Relight, Shadows=1, Highlights=0, Detail=6.4, Depth=64, Fuzz=0.3, Blend=Screen, Opacity=50%