Brasstown Falls In South Carolina First Post

[Ivan Garcia]

Wiith all due respect, I think the image has a horrible magenta cast now. Are you sure that your monitor is calibrated correctly?

Hi Johan.
Yes my monitor is calibrated.
The cast is intentional.
It accentuates the oxidised look on the rocks and water. I did this just to illustrate Don L technique, and I could not help messing with the looks of the picture, I should have applied a mask to confine the effect, but I didn't.
Kind regards
IGD

 

[JohanElzenga]

The cast is intentional.
It accentuates the oxidised look on the rocks and water.

OK, that's a matter of taste, then. Probably because I studied (bio)chemistry a long time ago, I have some difficulties with an 'oxidized look' of water... ;-)

 

[Nick Rains]

Hi Johan.
Yes my monitor is calibrated.
The cast is intentional.
It accentuates the oxidised look on the rocks and water. I did this just to illustrate Don L technique, and I could not help messing with the looks of the picture, I should have applied a mask to confine the effect, but I didn't.
Kind regards
IGD

There are some very influential 'rules' in traditional landscape photography. Everyone is free to break them of course, but it is interesting to see that most of the top players in the field tend to follow certain 'guidelines', if you will.

Two of the 'rules' that I personally follow are these:

1. Whites should be white. Waterfalls are white, cumulus clouds on a sunny day are white. The eye/brain expects certain things to be certain colours and, when they are not, an image can look slightly 'wrong'. Magenta is one of the worst casts to have because very little in nature causes a magenta cast. Green is to be avoided too.

2. In a vista or scenic type shot everything should be sharp. This is not a purist approach a la F64 club, it is a consequence of autofocus eyes. Everything we look at in a scene is sharp, so a photo that has a blurred foreground looks odd - the eyes want to focus on the forground but can't, thus the 'wrongness'. Differential focus is not a natural effect and is very hard to see with the naked eye. It is a powerful tool in some cases, sport, wildlife, macro but for scenes/vistas it is usually to be avoided.

 

[Don Lashier]

2. In a vista or scenic type shot everything should be sharp.

Nick, I agree with both your points, but sometimes masked sharpening is useful as in this shot where you really don't want to sharpen the falls or water. Another example for masked sharpening is of course shots with narrow DOF. That said, in my landscape photos I almost always strive for complete front to back focus (and hence sharpen all).

- DL

 

[Ivan Garcia]

... Magenta is one of the worst casts to have because very little in nature causes a magenta cast. Green is to be avoided too.

2. In a vista or scenic type shot everything should be sharp....

Hi Nick.
I agree with both points.
The magenta cast was an experiment of my own, I was trying to enhance the oxidised look of the water and rocks, like I said in my previous post, I should have used a mask, so as to confine the effect. This experiment was not supposed to see the light of day (hence not using the mask); I simply forgot to step back on the history palette before I posted it, as my only intention was to illustrate Don's technique for sharpening via masks.
IGD