At 4am, I hiked to the Montenvers Point to get to observ and take a picture of the sunrise above the mountain. At 6am, the first sunrays hit the mountain flancks in the background. And I used the S shaped of the glacier to lead the eyes to the sunny summits.
I edited a first version that did not enjoy a lot. Please tell me more what you think about this one.
Thanks a lot guys!
David
Ice river
hey David as i mentioned it doesn't have the drama of some of your other posts ...were you going for a softer look or did you want that extra bang? there are a few of us that I'm sure would take the time to help you emphasize the the sun hitting the peak and i would probably darken up a bit making a shadowy leading line to the main subject still a beautiful setting and a great shot
Hi David,
It's a bit of a "sad" shot for me as I know what the Mer de Glace used to look like, pre-global warming. The difficulty too is that it's a very popular spot, and Thomas Heaton has a semi-famous shot of this spot that he loves, you can check it out : https://thomasheaton.co.uk/shop/mer-de-glace/ He was actually lucky, because the clouds hid the fact that the peaks from this spot don't provide a very interesting shape (it's two almost flat sections and a diagonal), so you get the impression that there is a more menacing peak behind when there is not.
Also, he didn't pull out the shadows as much as you did, he just enhanced the glacier by adding some saturation in the blues, to guide the eye in. I think you need more contrast between the moraine/glacier and the surrounding cliffs.
thanks a lot for your feedback.
I had a look to Heaton's photography and....the landscape he took does not really deal with reality. I mean he processed much more his photography (or had better camera adjustments than mines). In between my raw file taken on the field and the photography you see, there are not a lot of differences. Maybe I had to use filters to induce a msyterious atmosphere rather than sho a naturalistic scene. Moreover I noticed that Heaton had a more snowy landscape (I took the photography at the end of august). So, the moraine deposits are more obvious in my photography.
I' m about to try to produce a B&W version with somes photographies I took in the afternoon, so with clouds hiding the Grandes Jorasses massif located at the background.
I'll show the result and ask for feedbacks.
Thanks a lot for taking time for this photography,
I appreciate a lot,
David
Yes Heaton did it in late Spring (May), he had to cross some névés to get there. He used a ND grad, but that's it. You can check the full video here : https://youtu.be/jwWd0RMjC34
He doesn't use photoshop except to remove a few things (a lamppost, people in the background, that kind of stuff), everything else is in lightroom. I've never seen him do a composite or anything, but he does adjust the colors quite a bit.
Ok, merci pour les infos. Je vais regarder attentivement. C'est vrai que mon cliché est très naturaliste, limite documentaire. Une version noir et blanc du même lieu dans les nuages pourrait être plus intéressante. Je testerai tout à l'heure.
Merci Nick!
Davis
et maintenant? j'ai vu la vidéo. La façon dont j'ai post-traité l'image ne fera pas de doute quant à l'inspiration...
Yes it's a much better shot.
For me it is just a bit flat david and needs a saturation boost. But that's pretty much my standard approach to a lot of post.Living in Adelaide South Australia we don't have access in our country to glaciers. Only where they once were.There are some live ones in New Zealand "across the ditch". You people in that part of the world should count your blessings you can see things like this.And photograph them.