Pond reflection of Graveyard Peak

[David_Senesac]

Graveyard Peak at 11,520 feet, reflecting in a shallow pond with turf hummocks at about 10,000 feet in the John Muir Wilderness. Early morning July 27, 2012, 150mm Nikor, Wisner Expedition, Provia 100F 4x5 transparency crudely flatbed scanned and CS5 Photoshop adjusted to reasonably match slide.

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I had surveyed this location the prior afternoon as the best subject near camp. It required walking out into a few inches of water with muddy bottom. The kind of shot one makes rather sure they have everything ready in their pockets before setting up and then is extra careful not to drop anything. For more information on this image, see Day 7 of the following feature story of a 9-day backpack with the above image one of 105 embedded images. The link to the feature is also at top right on my home page.

David Senesac July 2012 Minnow Creek Backpack

 

[otherprof]

Beautiful image. Worth all the trouble and care taken! The tufts of grass really add to it for me, as they force me to see this as a photograph of the particular place it was taken, and not just the beautiful landscape in the distance.

 

[Dagwood56]

Breathtaking!

 

[charlie76]

cool image...but the hills and sky are overexposed IMO. You can bring out more detail in the mountains by burning them a bit...maybe half-a-stop or so.

 

[David_Senesac]

cool image...but the hills and sky are overexposed IMO. You can bring out more detail in the mountains by burning them a bit...maybe half-a-stop or so.

I understand why you are making that input. There isn't much definition in the face of the background peak but that isn't due to to overexposure. If one samples the jpg even the brightest areas of snow with an eyedropper, readings will be well below 255/255/255. I just looked at the transparency and it looks perfect.

It was relatively early in the morning when there was still a modest yellow cast to the light. Not sure what you are seeing with the sky as it looks fine on my high end monitor. However as one can see from the chutes at the top, the sun angle was directly lighting that granite face so there was no shadowing on any of the small scale elements. When I eventually have a drum scan and then large print made, that area will look just fine showing all the loose talus with definition. With the huge amount of downsizing for a reasonable web sized display this area much like other similar resulting web images, ends up without much definition.

I just ran a couple of S curves on the upper quadrant of the same scan file originally used that helped a wee bit, then replaced the image on my site It would look a bit more balanced if I were to reduce the overall brightness of that slope more however then it would not reflect what the transparency shows which per my realistic style has more importance than trying to make an image more aesthetic.