Corn Flakes or Wheaties

[Ysarex]

Got out on the Mississippi flood plain yesterday. We're in the early stages of a drought here in the Midwest and I wanted to see how the crops were holding together. The farmers have had to start up the irrigation systems. The wheat is harvested and most of the corn got an early start and fortunately managed to sink some roots before it stopped raining. I saw some late planted corn that looked pretty parched. Grabbed this snapshot -- I liked the contrast between the corn and wheat stubble.

Joe

 

[msaha]

Nice colors!
Love the sky and clouds.
I think it would look better as a B&W shot.

 

[Skhigh]

B&W would be cool or maybe saturate the sky a bit more....LOVE the title!!

 

[WesternGuy]

Neat image, I really like the contrast between each of the crops and the sky as well. I would be interested to see how it would look if you increased the contrast in the sky a bit to bring out the blue. Not sure about a black and white, I think that you might lose some of the contrast between the sky and the crops, but it would be interesting to try.
________________
WesternGuy

 

[Ernicus]

I played around with it in b&w, didn't lose contrast in sky/crops, but the sky did not convert well and just kinda ruins it. the constrast of wheat/corn was cool though. Maybe he'd have better luck with the raw in dealing with the sky

 

[Ysarex]

Glad you all like the photo. I think it looks good in B&W also, but if I had to choose I'd stick with the color rendition.

As for the sky, I pushed pretty hard as it is and have already started building up considerable noise. This is the Mississippi river valley. Our average relative humidity this time of year is 85% and out there in the corn fields with the irrigation systems spraying in the sun you can count on it being above 90%. Here's the camera original JPEG -- absolutely untouched except that I sized it down.

Now that's our Midwestern sky; fortunately in early June the temp is still in the mid 30s (Celcius) next month we should hit 40. Yep, nothing like 40 degrees and 90% relative humidity! So Ernicus I did process from the Raw file. In fact to get the camera JPEG I had to use the Raw converter that comes with the camera to create it as I don't save JPEG files otherwise.

To get the degree of contrast in the sky that I did I had to resort to Photoshop. At that point I had a 16 bit TIFF and what I did was extract the Red channel to a separate layer, mask the foreground and then blend the Red channel with the background image using the Soft Light blend mode. The problem with this (and any method that increases contrast) is rapid noise build up. So the original I posted was my best compromise. I could push it harder and filter the noise harder but it's ultimately a downward spiral. Interesting about Raw and B&W since Ernicus mentioned it. The B&W I posted here is half and half. The foreground is directly from my Raw converter (C1) but the sky is a b&W conversion of the sky from my RGB TIFF file. That trick with the Red channel to boost contrast isn't available in the Raw conversion process so I converted the RGB TIFF to B&W and then pasted in that sky over the Raw processed B&W.

Thanks,
Joe

 

[Ernicus]

That b&w is damn near identical to what I came up with, only my sky was a bit more messy and noisy. I agree that color is better for this shot.

 

[jowensphoto]

Love the original post. The title is clever, too!

What ISO were you shooting at?

 

[Ysarex]

Love the original post. The title is clever, too!

What ISO were you shooting at?

Thanks, ISO 80. I only had my compact camera along which I almost never take off ISO 80. Although larger than most compacts it still has a small sensor relative to a DSLR (7.6 x 5.7mm) so I fight to keep the ISO down.

Joe