White Sands New Mexico *5 Pics*

anwmn1

After spending some time in Alamagordo NM I stopped off in White Sands National Monument











Others in my LPS Challenge Possibilities thread

Marc Muench

#1 is great

Also enjoyed seeing the others

Llywellyn

#2 is so ghostly and ethereal to me. I love it.

I also really like #4. The lighting is beautiful. Wonderful use of the sand as background.

You're making me regret not going back in April when I had the chance!

Grizzle6

These are beautiful. A location I would love to shoot...
I feel as though they may be just a tad flat or underexposed, however. I'm thinking a simple check of your white point on your levels might bump up the contrast just a bit. Just a suggestion...

schmoo

Aaron, as usual these scenes are great. I love the quality of the negative space in these and I'm sure it was even more enjoyable in person.

They look a little dark to me, as I am sure that the white sand was quite bright. My eyes crave a blinding experience.

Dusty Sensiba

Exposure is hard at white sands...
I think any brighter and the highlights will begin to blow out and lose detail.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the white sand is gypsum (sp?) and is the same material as sheetrock in your walls. It's not pure, bright white as you may expect.

I live about an hour away and go there a few times a year.

Good shots

anwmn1

Dusty Sensiba wrote:

I think any brighter and the highlights will begin to blow out and lose detail.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the white sand is gypsum (sp?) and is the same material as sheetrock in your walls. It's not pure, bright white as you may expect.

I live about an hour away and go there a few times a year.

Good shots

Thanks Dusty- you beat me to it.

When shooting White Sands there were several challenging features-

1. White- Camera's have a hard time focusing on white subjects and the minute details that we can see with our eyes are often not picked up by the camera sensors.

2. When the sun was out there is no definition in the sand- even to your eyes. There were several occasions that I couldn't tell I was going to walk down a dune until I physically felt it with my legs. Your eyes hurt from trying to focus so much

3.. This is monsoon season in the Southwest so there are large thunderstorms that roll in each day. Lighting changed from bright sun which made shooting almost impossible to impending darkness from the storm as the sun was setting. I gave up about 45 min before actual sunset because of the storm when I saw that the sun was not going to break through the clouds anymore.

4. Terrain - it is actually a hard area to compose a picture. Especially when dealing with the light and the white.

5. Most of the shooting is done facing South or West which means shooting into the sun in the afternoon. To the East there are all kinds of people playing in the dunes. I didn't have enough time or water to walk the 4 mile loop which would have allowed me to shoot towards the east with light to my back

Here is an example of a brighter shot. Notice how the details are lost



Shot at F22, ISO 100, Exposure 1/10, at 14mm


This one was shot with sun to my back

DavidTO

There's still plenty of room for lightening and contrast in these images, IMO.

hamster

Aaron, really great shots. I love the last one.

Awais Yaqub

Wonderful photos ! loved them all my fav are 1st 2

anwmn1

DavidTO wrote:

There's still plenty of room for lightening and contrast in these images, IMO.

Hey- that looks pretty good.

Can I send you all the images and have you work on them for me?





I haven't done much at all with these- so yes- there is work that can be done. Thanks for gratiously pointing that out

Grizzle6

anwmn1 wrote:

Hey- that looks pretty good.

Can I send you all the images and have you work on them for me?





I haven't done much at all with these- so yes- there is work that can be done. Thanks for gratiously pointing that out

I did that same thing as well, but didn't really want to post it (not sure how you feel about people messing with your images). Just a simple setting of black and white points with your levels makes this image about ten times better. Simply hold down the alt/option key while moving your sliders. Move the sliders until you start to see any sort of light (or dark) parts of your image peeping through--these are your white and black points. Look at your image and make sure it looks natural--on occasion, you can take it too far, but most of the time it's quite representative of the beautiful scene you captured.