Crummy weather and flowers

coldclimb

Was just checking out the Death Valley thread and it reminded me of this pic I took last summer. The scene looked sweet, with the pink fireweed in the foreground and the ominous dark clouds around Pinnacle Peak in the background, but my picture was disappointing compared to what I had expected and tried for. Is this enough info for you to look at this and tell me what you would have done differently?

coldclimb

The best part of this day though was that after taking the photo, I went for a walk to see if Pinnacle was more than just a scramble. It was a little loose and really wet, so I figured it was about time to turn back when I started passing rappel anchors. Here's the view looking back down from my high point, just above the tip of the right-hand fireweed. You can kinda see the angle by the way there's a rock sitting on top of that chunk that sticks out just left of center. Nasty weather all around, but I got some decent pics and great memories to share!:D

Shelster2005

Hi there!
Loved your picture, did you try a different angle, maybe Landscape instead of Portrait, you maybe could have gotten more of the background in that way.... Keep up the good work I would love to see more.

coldclimb

Shelster2005 wrote:

Loved your picture, did you try a different angle, maybe Landscape instead of Portrait, you maybe could have gotten more of the background in that way.... Keep up the good work I would love to see more.

Yeah I took a bunch of different shots, but this was the best of them. Also tried getting some bees in the picture, but that didn't work too well.

ian408

coldclimb wrote:

Was just checking out the Death Valley thread and it reminded me of this pic I took last summer. The scene looked sweet, with the pink fireweed in the foreground and the ominous dark clouds around Pinnacle Peak in the background, but my picture was disappointing compared to what I had expected and tried for. Is this enough info for you to look at this and tell me what you would have done differently?

It's a nice shot. Subject and background are complimentary.

I think a little wider angle might do the trick. Includes more of the background and
maintains the vertical perspective of the fireweed.

Ian

pathfinder

coldclimb wrote:

Was just checking out the Death Valley thread and it reminded me of this pic I took last summer. The scene looked sweet, with the pink fireweed in the foreground and the ominous dark clouds around Pinnacle Peak in the background, but my picture was disappointing compared to what I had expected and tried for. Is this enough info for you to look at this and tell me what you would have done differently?

Welcome to dgrin.

I think the reason you were disappointed is that the clouds in your image are white and fluffy,rather than the dark ominous ones you described.

I think this is because the exposure for the foreground flowers, overexposed the the clouds around the mountain top. A little fill flash to light the foreground while exposing for the background could have avoided this.

But all is not lost - it can probably be edited in Photoshop to darken the clouds and make them more ominous looking. Select the clouds and overlay blend them to darken them or select them and duplicate the layer with a multiply mode.

I took the liberty of darkening the sky with a little overlay blending and a gradient black from the upper edge. Is this more what you had in mind when you shot the image? A little editing with the original probably can create what you were hoping to capture.... I just did this with the 800x600 pixel image posted on dgrin so it will not have the fine detail that would be possible with the entire image.