Synopshots

Alpine Stream

A client, RSD, held their annual sales kickoff meeting high in the Alps above Gstaad, a fine community all right about an hour from Montreux.

This pic, a bit of a cliche to be sure, is the result of several key processing enhancements.

First, it's five frames blended and tone-mapped using Photomatix Pro.  When I brought the TIFF into camera raw, I was amazed by the register accuracy.  So just the same I went and made some detail / sharpness adjustments in camera raw.

In Photoshop, it required a crop from the original.  I used Topaz -- quirky given the memory constraints but still a fine tool -- to bring up local contrast to create the texture, and to boost some of the saturation.

I used a mask to reduce some of the overzealous pixel effects, especially on the water.

Surface blur enabled me to remove some of the distracting detail in the surrounding trees.  I really wanted to keep attention on the rocks and water.

Finally, an elliptical selection, quick mask, gaussian blur and fill with black: to produce a bit of vignette around those same tree detail areas.

Enjoy!

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Tags: Alps, Alpine stream, synopshots, Switzerland, Suisse, Schweitz

What is the right size for the images in these posts?

Testing image widths for PhoBlo posts...

Great-Blue

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Ah Flickr. I started out with a far smaller Great Blue Heron when I originally posted this photo... but the beauty of the Flickr Gallery is that there are critiques galore to help you refine your technique. Here I was able to tighten up considerably by layering the bird, using LucisArt Exposure to bring out the under-wing detail without too terribly generating digital artifacts, add the vignette... and here you have it.

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Thus was I reintroduced to photography. A good friend persuaded me to take up the camera again... and he introduced me to Flickr. The rest, as they say, is history. This is the first photograph of mine to be selected by the mysterious and fickle muse, Flickr Explore.

Photos also available to view on Flickr.