Michigan sand dunes at dawn, Silver Lake State Park, Michigan
Wow, December already… where did November go?? I am still editing through some dune shots and decided to process this one this morning. I photographed this scene probably 10 minutes or so after the beautiful sunrise I posted about. It seems like quite long ago now that I learned the lesson that you should aways look in the opposite direction of a sunrise. There can be incredible Monet painting like pastels in a western sky at dawn.
They are usually quite subtle, and some adjustments to contrast in post processing can really bring those subtleties out. There is another lesson I have learned just recently. More often now I am separating the white balance in an image between foreground and sky. For many of these dune images, I like a white balance of around 6000K as a starting point. It provides just enough warmth to the coloring of the sand, kind of like the 81A/B filters. Remember those things? I am not sure anyone uses them anymore.
Lightroom graduated filter adjustment for sky
However, for the sky, 6000 sometimes eliminates some of the cooler tones and tonal variety that can be prevalent in a western sky at dawn. If you are facing towards the sun, the sky colors are usually much warmer anyway with reds and yellows. So in Lightroom, if I decide I like 6000 (or something close) as a white balance for most of the image, I shift that globally. Then I use the graduated filter, normally used to just even out the exposure of the sky, to also cool it down a little. You can see it is not much for this shot, I only applied -8 to the temperature adjustment, so you don’t need much. For many of the shots I have used this technique on, I ended up liking the warm vs. cool harmony in the colors.
So just like I have noted a little reminder to always turn around 180 degrees to take a look during twilight and sunrise, I have another that keeps a close eye on what any white balance adjustment is doing to the sky. If it is having a negative impact, I know with a tool like Lightroom, it is easy enough to counteract.
See more Silver Lake Sand dunes photos.
Striking Photo. Nice.
There is always something going on behind us and quite often it is a lot more interesting than what we are looking at. Excellent tip, Mark. Like David, some of my better photographs have occurred when I looked behind me and every once in a while I get so engrossed in what is in front of me I get quite a shock when I turn to find someone looking at me…..once a coyote. 🙂
I’ve read about selective white balance but have not tried it myself. Great tip.
Thanks Steve. Now I just need to remember my own advice!
Beautiful nature and landscape..
Magnificent and beautiful! Keep it up..
I’m just a newbie to nature and landscape.
Visit mine sometimes:
http://blogartofphotography.blogspot.com/
Thank you!
Actually a funny story about doing the 180. When I first saw the title of this post in my RSS feed, I didn’t have time to read the post. I was headed directly outside to do some photographing. I kept looking behind me and one of my best images from that session came from turning around 180 degrees. Just the reminder I received from your title helped me. Thanks Mark.
That’s great to hear David!
Made some of my best photos by looking around, not just in the 180 direction. However, I still sometimes forget. I learned to look everywhere on a walk one time with a contemporary of Dad’s, Stan Zrnich, another student from the early California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute, a few classes behind my dad.
Beautiful image, Mark. Yes turning around is always a good thing; I’ve missed many good sunrises/sets by NOT doing that.
I’ve been doing multiple-processed RAW files for different white balances for about a year now and really like the way the images turn out. It’s an often overlooked aspect of image processing.
Cheers,
Greg
Thanks Greg. I know the feeling as I have forgotten a few times thinking the light was fizzling out when the action was happening behind me. Doh!
I agree on the processing, I haven’t been doing it that long myself, but will be paying closer attention to it now.
I love the work,I have yet to do much landscape photography but did get a nice 180 degree Fish Eye lens to begin soon. Mostly do weddings here in San Antonio. Anyway, I will use these tips when venturing onward! Cheers.
This is a stunning image. I have no doubt that it would have been impressive without your processing technique, but your know-how put in a very special category.
Excellent tip Mark! I never thought about shifting the white balance for only part of an image. But now that you say it I think I do a similar kind of thing using the filters in Nik Color Efex, I just never thought of it in those terms, nor did I realize I could accomplish it in Lightroom using your technique. Thanks!
Thanks Anne, I am glad you found it useful!
Mark, was any of your post-processing involving contrast? This “noise” looks somewhat like what I’ve experienced sometimes when I do a little contrast enhancement on certain images…deep blue skies for one. I also wonder if some of this is from the WordPress image compression routine.
Still, another beautiful scene and proof we as photographers should be aware of all of our surrounds, all of the time.
Hi Earl, yes, I did adjust contrast in the sky. There is some visible in Lightroom also, but it is pretty slight.
Thanks!
Very interesting, Mark. I’ve done some similar things with white balance on images from the southwest. Sometimes the reds and oranges in the rocks (at sunrise or sunset) tend to mess up the white balance of a deep blue sky. Especially when there’s some pink in the clouds. The blue just looks “wrong”. It’s easiest, of course, when there’s a nice straight horizon line for separation.
I noticed something else: if you enlarge the above image you can see a little noise in the sky area. Which makes me wonder what caused it. Is it the shift in white balance? Not likely, I think. A shift of -8 isn’t much. Or did you meter the overall exposure on the sand and then have to pull down the luminance of the sky? Assuming a single exposure, that could produce a little noise in the blue areas. I only mention it because I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen noise on a D800 image!
I’m certainly not criticizing, of course. It’s a beautifully balanced photograph and the noise can only be seen if you really look for it. I doubt you could see it on any size print.
Hey Paul, it is interesting you saw some noise. While I can’t see it in the view of the larger JPEG on my 23″ monitor, I did notice some of it when processing and working at 100%. Immediately I thought I screwed up and must have used a higher ISO setting. But double checking, it was ISO 100! Then I thought something in the processing may have done it, so I looked at the RAW file. The sky is quite bright in the RAW file, but if I decreased the exposure some, I could see it was there in the RAW image. So I really don’t know what the deal is with that. I didn’t apply any noise reduction in LR because it was at ISO 100.
However, like you mention, this type of noise this close will never show in a printed form.
Once or twice, I have found noise or banding in a jpeg that wasn’t in the RAW file and never showed up prints, nothing like what this. Interesting.
Oh, and I also do the 180 trick.
I like that technique and will have to try it. This is an awesome image because you take the time to make these little adjustments.
I find there is a great deal of hidden beauty in so many images that the camera default exposure, white balance, etc tend to obscure. Sometimes I feel like an explorer within my own pixels just to find out what is really there. Thanks Monte.
Beautiful photo Mark. I think it is the little nuances like this that really count and makes one’s images unique!
Thanks Howard!
This is a wonderful technique and it looks especially nice on this image. I remember trying to do something similar when printing color slides (years ago, of course). It wasn’t easy but I got pretty good at it. The adjustment was made with filtration and exposure, really the only controls we had since chemistry and temperature had to be constant in color printing. I like the LR4 technique better.
Wow, I can only imagine the difficulty in trying to do this a la chemical darkroom. Fortunately no chemicals required here. 🙂