Round and Round We Go

[JimFox]

This was from a few weeks ago in Colorado. It's on Hwy 550 south of Silverton. Alisa had come up with the idea and it sounded fun to me, so we set up for this one night after scouting earlier. This was a 66 sec exposure. We had timed how long it took the vehicles to complete this hairpin curve, and it was close to 45 secs I think if I remember right.

The ground got captured darker as there was several stops of light difference between the ground layer and the sky. When processing I did 3 versions, one with the ground super dark with the idea it would make the light trails more prominent. A second one where there was some shadow detail, but still pretty dark. And then this third one, where I did full shadow recovery. At first when comparing I was preferring the darker versions, but in the end I liked seeing more detail and seeing how the cars were lighting up the ground layer better. But I think it's just personal preference.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

You got a really neat result from your efforts - nice work.

 

[Ben Egbert]

This is pretty slick. Good planning and execution. Also good imagination

 

[Jameel Hyder]

It turned out nicely. Good vision and planning

 

[JimFox]

You got a really neat result from your efforts - nice work.

Thanks Alan!

 

[MonikaC]

Good use of the traffic, Jim. I usually just grumble at it.....

 

[JimFox]

Good use of the traffic, Jim. I usually just grumble at it.....

Ha ha, thanks Monika

 

[BarryHamilton]

Really nicely done, Jim! I love the perfectly soft light and contrast of the land and sky for that time of day, and the car lights add a very cool element to the scene.

 

[Jim Dockery]

Monika got it - nice work!

 

[Douglas Sherman]

I love this one, Jim.

 

[Beth]

this is awesome. love the crazy clouds at the top. but the light trails around that hairpin turn make the image for me.

 

[Bart Carrig]

Incredible image Jim. Actually, astounding !

Bart

 

[JimFox]

Really nicely done, Jim! I love the perfectly soft light and contrast of the land and sky for that time of day, and the car lights add a very cool element to the scene.

Thank you Barry! Yeah, it all turned out great.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Very cool Jim! You should not have mentioned the other versions though - now I want to see those too Wondering in particular how the middle ground exposure version would look compared to this one. But regardless, a very creative image that shows the benefit of visualizing, planning, and scouting. Love it!

ML

 

[JimFox]

Very cool Jim! You should not have mentioned the other versions though - now I want to see those too Wondering in particular how the middle ground exposure version would look compared to this one. But regardless, a very creative image that shows the benefit of visualizing, planning, and scouting. Love it!

ML

Thanks so much Mike!

I mentioned the versions I made as a little insight into my thought process, and perhaps to help others to learn how I arrived at this look. Sadly, I will probably not process any other versions of this since this is the one I settled on. And... I have about 800 more images from that trip I would need to process first before going back to this one. So, sorry for tantalized and teasing you with thoughts of other versions. If it helps, the version you were asking to see looked pretty bad. The issue with that middle dark version was it got too busy looking in the dark areas. Since the dark area's were not completely dark, edge of objects (rocks, grass, etc) did show up slightly, just enough to be a distraction. The darkest version, where the ground basically goes to silhouette is probably the #2 version.