City - Scottsdale State - AZ Country - United States
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Class Project: Framing As Improvement
The assignment this week was to find a way to naturally frame a subject. I drove around some very rural parts of the city and tried to find subjects worth framing. I spent about a half hour in front of this gated community where they had a very nice cactus garden which seemed to frame some distant mountains (Pinnacle Peak). I used my tripod and shot about 50 images from every possible angle I could think of. Then, just as I was driving away, I saw from my car window a nice frame of another (smaller) mountain peak. I leaned out the window and snapped it thinking it would be just another of many shots or it might be too blurry because of hand-holding it. To my surprise, it turned out to be the best of all the shots I took. I was using my new lens (Nikon 12-24mm) and for some reason all my images were very dark except for this one. I was shooting on Manual and had the f/stop up to 22. This seemed to make the images darker than the meter (or the LCD) was telling me and along with this came much unwanted noise. I did do some post-processing of noise and I composited 2 copies of the RAW file. One I exposed for the sky and one I exposed for the foreground. Then I masked the lighter sky to reveal the darker one. It wasn't as much work as it may sound. Thanks for any C&C you might give on this. ~ Warm regards, Rocky
Mt. Peek-a-Boo! lol This is so pretty that it almost looks fake, Rocky! Well done, and worth all that effort if you come up with a result like this. :)
Thanks, Eric. I tried this image with that dirt road cropped out but just didn't like the composition of it. Of course, I could always clone out that part of the road with Photoshop. :~) Thanks for the critique. ~ Warm regards, Rocky
Rocky, I love the framing effect on the distant peak. I don't like the roadway to the right. Your colors are always so pleasing and vivid, Photoshop or not you got the eye. I love your work. Keep snapping. Eric
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{K:3349} 8/5/2006
