City - Britstown State - NORTHERN CAPE Country - South Africa
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Funny how there is always less guys at the top. A karoo hill covered with euphorbias. Uncropped, polarizer, adjusted brightness & saturation, sharpness and contrast.
Cool effect, Joggie. I like the contrast of reflective green and the red rock. I think the deep sky is OK for similar reason of contrast. The composition is static but not an issue for me because I like the tonal aspects. Eb
Cool! Another reason to travel down south! I've seen those blue skies in Death Valley too, and if I look at the image you've attached, I stand corrected where the saturation is concerned, but there still is a rather clashing contrast with the hue.
I see that in my own images too, and I found the way to correct that is fairly easy: Using Hue / Saturation, I increase all colours a notch, but reduce the brightness of the blues a tad, and shift the hue slider for the blue layer to the left (-3 to -7 in value) IMO, that recreates the balance in the colours, but that's also a matter of liking. Just a thought...
Hi Hugo - I understand that you can think its oversaturated. Actually this is a very good example of the deep blue South African skies. I increased the saturation with no more than 7 or 8% if I remeber correctly. I had to do a lot to get it sharp though since I had some camera shake. I purposely uploaded the image to test the reaction and agree totally about the flatness. However I liked the symbolic meaning since thats what made me take the shot. To illustrate the point about the blue sky I attached another shot taken at the same place (in a little different direction though as the polarizer effect - uneven blues will show). This is exactly as I ofloaded the raw file from the camera, no manipulation at all.
Hi Joggie, I think you went just a tad over the top with the saturation, the sky has become the dominant area in this shot - sort of... Cool alignment of cacti, though, something we, europeans, don't get to see too often...
Maybe I'm being a bit unfair in this critique, but comparing this to your other high standard, I don't think this one can match any onf them, the head-on approach makes the image relatively flat, and this photo somehow bears the signs of overmanipulation, reducing the top notch image quality of your usually outstanding images.
Frankly, it's quite a relief to see even you take less successful shots...:)
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{K:68840} 4/10/2006
