Wow – A lot to choose from, and the edits had quite a broad range of creativity mixed in. In fact, they were so good, I decided I should take the time to break down what I saw. Here’s how I broke it down:
Sean – This was a truly wonderful edit. You did a spectacular job removing the haze from the sky and the valley. Your color adjustments brought out the character of the granite ledge and reminded me how clean and crisp the morning air was. The shadows lost some detail due to the levels adjustment, but still outstanding.
Jared – This reminded me of an earlier B&F you did (I think you won that one) where you converted an old mansion to B/W and added flying bats everywhere – it looked just like the cover of a Stephen King novel. At first I didn’t think this worked for this shot, but each time I went through the images, I kept getting the spooky impression that somebody far away was spying on her with an old/dirty spyglass. Since her back is turned, it’s like she didn’t even know somebody was watching her. This turned out to be a great job. I also liked the way you rotated the image slightly, that added to the overall feeling of mystery.
Richard – Spectacular. Just spectacular. At more than 13,000 feet, this is WAY above the tree line where nothing grows. It is just plain rugged granite. Your conversion enhanced every aspect of the image, which took me forever to compose. I didn’t want to lug a DSLR up Mt. Whitney, so I took this pic with a little point & shoot. I wanted to capture a sense of solitude and use the forest in the valley combined with the sloped ledge as a leading line to draw attention to the lone hiker. I also wanted to juxtapose the rugged mountain range against the soft void created by the deep sky. Finally, I wanted to take advantage of the dramatic shadows that wash the valley for a brief period of about 1-hour as the early morning sun rises. – You must have read my mind when you did this edit.
Monty – While you didn’t do much to the picture, it actually looks a lot like many of the pictures I took. (I must have snapped about 30 images with slightly different compositions.) It turns out that most of my images were landscape orientation like you created. Everything is so big up there, and there’s basically a 360 degree view of mountains. Your image reminded me just how “wide” everything looks from that vantage point.
Ed – I should give this one to you for the shear brilliance (and audacity!!!) of the diving board. That’s more than 1,000 feet straight down!!! If this was a poster, I’d buy it and hang it on the wall. Your edit give new meaning to the term "Cliff Diving" !!!
Joe – Essentially the same comments as for Monty. Both you and Monty must see things similar to the way I see them, since most of my pics of this scene were taken in the landscape orientation. … I think I only composed about a half-dozen shots in the portrait orientation - after a last minute decision to use the sky to dramatize the mountain range in the BG.
Cat – I stared at your “post card” for quite some time. Without knowing it, you put a smile on my face with the caption “Wish you were here”. Your edit reminds me of somebody very special. Thank you. The only critique I would have is the vignette is a tad heavy for me, but still, I like the overall effect.
Ilse – I always love your work. I think you have an incredibly artistic eye, and I love how you compose your pics and edit your images. Your first image reminds me of much of your work, wherein you use old paper brush overlays very effectively. I think if you had desaturated the photo slightly it would have had a “timeless” aspect to it. It turns out I took a number of images with the lone hiker facing the camera, but I waited, and recomposed with the hiker facing away. The obscurity gained by waiting until the hiker turned away helps the viewer feel a better sense of being there, and your overall effect adds to the effect that “anybody” could step into the picture at any point in time. Anyway, that said, I actually like your second pic better!! I got a good laugh!!
David – WOW. … That’s some pretty fancy layer work. I think you pulled it off well. Further up the mountain, there’s nothing but huge boulders to climb over, and now that I think back, it’s like being on a different planet. So does this mean that you’ve discovered water on Mars??
OK ---------- After examining and re-examining these images all afternoon, I’m going to give this one to Richard. I had a REALLY hard time choosing this time, because the approaches taken were so different. In their own way, each image had some phenomenal attributes. But in the end, Richard, that was spectacular.
Great choice on a very difficult field, Silver
