Mountain Ridges at Sunrise comparison (feedback)
I'm looking to set if people prefer the color or black and white version.
This picture was taken at sunrise in the maroon bells wilderness while cresting Frigid Air Pass. The light and contrast was amazing, and it ended up being one of my favorites from the trip. It was taken with a 500mm lens on a fuji body (so about 750mm equivalent).
Also always open to critique, I've been trying new things with editing and trying to become more proficient with masking and color grading.
5 Comments
Colour.
For this comparison.
I have hiked over that pass from the Crested Butte side. Not all the way into Aspen, but over it and then turned around and went back down. If it were mine I would kick up the contrast by using a levels adjustment layer to bring the highlights to where they are just "kissed" by the light. Not enough to blow them out but enough so that they just barely have detail and definition in tones. Next I would move the midtones down so there is darkness, but they aren't black. Burn the sky down some. Notice in my attached re-work that doing that gives the feeling of brilliance to the highlights without making them brighter. Nice idea. I like the interplay and zig zag motion of the ridges in the foreground. Hope you don't mind me screen shotting the image and re-working it. About. a two or three minute edit. Same could be done with the color one. I just don't work in color very often.
Thanks for your feedback for the example that makes it easy to see what yoire talking about!
Everything in photography is about controlling what people see, and how they see it. How we show that then becomes a matter of personal "style". When I was on FB, before I was kicked off it I was in a number of photography pages. There were several people their whose work I recognized before I even saw the byline.
Fwiw I much prefer your original b&w edit vs the reworked. It was pushed so hard that the pronounced haloing along the edges of the mountain are a major distraction. This could be because they were working with a screenshot, but I like the subtlety and differences of your first go around. Very nice image.