View From Cannery Point

Posted by Don Smith (California, United States) on 3 August 2008 in Landscape & Rural.

This is one of those images that took a lot of post-production work! I shot this in late afternoon light from Point Lobos looking across at the pricey real estate of Carmel and Pebble Beach as fog began to drift in from the Pacific Ocean. It started as a 6-frame HDR in my favorite HDR program Photomatix Pro 3.0.1 and then the rest of the image balancing (tones and color) were finshed in Photoshop CS3. Finally, Noise Ninja was applied and dust spots removed. Nik Viveza helped mask and enhance the foreground wildflowers. This is one of the many spots we will visit in my upcoming Big Sur 2009 workshops. These and many more image optimization techniques will be taught during the workshop! Please visit my website and click on the Workshop tab for more details Don Smith Photography.com

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Comments (14)

Marie Le Corre from Voiron, France

Beautiful colours for this landscape with a good composition

3 Aug 2008 7:40am

Stefan from Thiersee, Austria

many different colors in your image, beautiful shot!

3 Aug 2008 8:14am

shahab from Qazvin, Iran

Beautiful scene!Lovely light!What`s your idea about making HDR from a single shot when there is some winds?I mean I think it`s suitable enough(take a look at my today`s post please,I like to know your opinion about it) & it can solve the problem of that blue parts(if they are not intentional or because of natural light).Another way to get rid of that blues is some processing in photoshop,selecting the meadow part of the picture & changing the blue to green in hue/saturation or replace color.But all of these has meaning if the blue parts are undesirable to you!

3 Aug 2008 8:21am

Cia from Kvänum, Sweden

Wonderful image!

3 Aug 2008 9:51am

Eleftheria! from Athens, Greece

Beautiful, beautiful colors! Don, bravo!

3 Aug 2008 12:48pm

Don Smith from California, United States

Good morning to all,

Thanks again everyone for your postitive comments. Shahab, I've left a comment on your post - you do really nice work!

3 Aug 2008 2:17pm

shahab from Qazvin, Iran

Thank you very much,you can see my reply on your responses page or on my blog.

3 Aug 2008 3:22pm

Marion from Nanaimo, BC, Canada

The end result is beautiful and it shows that you have a real artistic side to you. Are you sure you wouldn't like to pick up a brush? Seriously, I think it takes real talent to be able to take a picture and see just what processing it needs to get such a stunning result.

3 Aug 2008 4:43pm

Don Smith from California, United States

Thanks so much Marion. This is why I did pick up my first camera some 40+ years ago - I had no drawing/pianting ability but felt the need to express myself somehow. I did study how the great artists used light and shadow to create depth. Unfortunately, film (and even digital) doesn't have the dynamic range of the human eye. But the workarounds began with Photoshop and layer masks, and now HDR software. It's my hope one day digital sensors will have the dynamic range of the human eye. I'm sure they are working on it as we speak! Thanks again for your nice comments.

BTW, for those of you who are using Photomatix Pro 3.0, you can download free Photomatix Pro 3.1 beta 2 from their website http://www.hdrsoft.com. Beta 1 fixed the problems with chromatic abberations, and beta 2 solved the large file "Out of Memory" dilemma. I have been playing with loading (7) RAW files from the Canon 1DsMKIII and it works - that's a lot of pixels!

3 Aug 2008 7:27pm

Helma from Tehran, Iran

Very nice image !! Beautiful colors and Lovely sky .. Excellent work !

3 Aug 2008 8:52pm

One from Açores, Portugal

Very beautiful colors. Excellent composition.
Good mastery of Photomatix.

3 Aug 2008 11:38pm

DarkElf from Perth, Australia

your extensive post processing work paid off here handsomely! great detail across the whole frame and the colours look very nice too and retain enough of a natural look...

4 Aug 2008 2:48am