Painted Hills Unit John Day Fossil Beds

[bunkhouse]

First submission... let me know what you think.

Regards, Ken Taylor

http://bunkhouse-studio.com/PH.jpg

[GPR1]

Nice shot. I've photograhed the painted hills, but never in great light.

I would crop the sky to just above the horizon; the extra sky doesn't add anything, and I like the balace of the composition without it.

I wonder whether there was a slightly different spot to shoot from that would have provided something interesting in the foreground. It would be a stronger photo.

I would also try curves in PS to bring out the shadows a bit more.

My two cents worth.

[bunkhouse]

Thank you... I thought the sky was more distracting than helpful.

Regards,

Ken

[CyberDyneSystems]

This is wonderfull! What scenery. I agree with GPR,. lose a littl of the sky and also toy aroung with slective colors and saturation,. perhaps a deeper blue to the sky would add something?

[henkbos]

This is wonderfull scenery, but the picture seems to be divided in three areas: the sky, the hills in the background and the 'painted' hills in the foreground. These areas don't work very well together. Try a closer crop of the painted hills and boost the colors a little.

[Laziferous]

I agree with the others, as far as color saturation, and cropping. I took a moment to see what it would look like in PS, out of curiosity (could've been better). Here's the result. I hope you don't mind. This is the way I saw it. I'll delete it in a few days, or promptly upon your request.

http://home.comcast.net/~pottajava/misc/bunkhouse.jpg

[henkbos]

Like this one a lot better. Few more suggestions to experiment: square crop from the bottom of the original, change the color of the inner frame to white.

[bunkhouse]

Chris,

Thanks for helping me think outside standard format. Your cropping and adjustments are excellent. I'm trying some other things as well but truly appreciate your help!

Many regards,

Ken

[bunkhouse]

BTW...
What did you use to frame the image?

Regards,

Ken

[Laziferous]

Photoshop, of course!

j/k... you knew that :D

I just put a thin black line around it, then used the color picker to grab a color from the image (the rust color set as the background color), then increased the canvas by I think it was 15 or 20 pixels, then toggled the foreground and background colors (so the background color was then black), and increased the canvas again by I think 40 or 50 pixels.

I'm sure there are better ways to do it. There are a lot of framing actions around too, if you don't feel like taking those steps every time. Or you can make your own actions. I use my own "resize and sharpen" action quite frequently.

Glad you liked it. I guess I'll go ahead and delete that image since you've seen it now.

Cheers