Remembering Fall Colors

[Kaylen M Pocaterra]

Snow came in last week and took away the color from the mountains. I was lucky to have been able to take a few shots before winter stopped in for a bit.

I ended up submitting these to a calendar contest in my town.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Kaylen,

Where are these? I have missed the aspen in the Santa Fe area when I am there.

Hopefully you get some of these selected for the contest, you have some worthy candidates. My favorite is the last one.

My only thing with it is I wish the sky was a bit darker in it. Nikon cameras, which if I remember is what you shoot with, are very good at pulling shadow detail out. So underexposing a bit more to make sure the sky is darker is a good way to capture these. You have an awesome roadway/path shot in #3, but the eyes are getting pulled up into the sky which is natural since our eyes will always be drawn to the brightest part of a photo. So if the sky was a bit darker, it would allow the eyes to really travel along that cool pathway.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Great series here and another vote for the last. Good luck on the contest.

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice fall colors - I love that last one. Good luck in the contest.

 

[Kaylen M Pocaterra]

Hey Kaylen,

Where are these? I have missed the aspen in the Santa Fe area when I am there.

Hopefully you get some of these selected for the contest, you have some worthy candidates. My favorite is the last one.

My only thing with it is I wish the sky was a bit darker in it. Nikon cameras, which if I remember is what you shoot with, are very good at pulling shadow detail out. So underexposing a bit more to make sure the sky is darker is a good way to capture these. You have an awesome roadway/path shot in #3, but the eyes are getting pulled up into the sky which is natural since our eyes will always be drawn to the brightest part of a photo. So if the sky was a bit darker, it would allow the eyes to really travel along that cool pathway.

Hi Jim,

These were taken in Pajarito Mountain Area up by the ski lodge.

I agree. I have a photographer friend in town that advised that I try to dodge and burn the sky area in order to darken it. I couldn't figure out how to do that in Lightroom however.

I'll see what I can do with the exposure.

Thank you all for the feedback, this group has really helped give me inspiration and technical support.

 

[JimFox]

Hi Jim,

These were taken in Pajarito Mountain Area up by the ski lodge.

I agree. I have a photographer friend in town that advised that I try to dodge and burn the sky area in order to darken it. I couldn't figure out how to do that in Lightroom however.

I'll see what I can do with the exposure.

Thank you all for the feedback, this group has really helped give me inspiration and technical support.

Hi Kaylen, it's great that we can be of help here, that's really awesome and a goal we have here.

I wish I could be of help with the Lightroom adjustments, but I soley use Photoshop, so maybe one of the other guys here can also jump in with Lightroom help on this.

My first question is, was the sky blown out when you shot it? Had you exposed to retain the highlights? I you had, that will certainly make everything else easier.

In Photoshop, rather then dodge the sky in, I prefer to use a layer mask with 2 layers. The first will be this image, the bottom layer will be the same image with the underexposed sky. On the top layer, you can easily use the Color Range tool in the Selection menu and select the sky area, it will select every nook and cranny in between the leaves also where the sky is. It's a great way to automatically create a complex layer mask. Then you just create the Layer Mask from that Selection, and your darker underexposed sky shows through into the top layer.

I know Lightroom can finally do Layer Masks, but I am not sure if it has a Color Range tool to use for Selections to create Layer Masks with.

 

[Kyle Jones]

Lightroom supports both luminance masking and color masking now. If I wanted to select the sky, I would start with either a graduated filter (for the second image) or an adjustment brush (third image) to grab the sky area I want to adjust. This would also grab trees and leaves. With the graduated filter selected, you can scroll down a little bit in the right panel to see the "range mask" option. Select "luminance" and select a range that limits the selection to the sky. Something like 80-100 looks to work. Now you can use the mask tools to reduce the exposure, reduce the whites/highlights, or my favorite in skies to add some dehaze. You can use the same functionality to select colors.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Hi Kaylen,

I would crop this image to remove the leaves with the brown edges at the top just to the right of center that go all the way to the right edge of the image. That would also reduce the amount of sky in the image and would reduce the effect of the brighter sky. I personally don't think you have to do anything to the sky if you do the cropping.

Welcome to Focal World, good luck in the contest (this image should be selected) and I look forward to seeing more of your images.