Eureka Dunes

One from Eureka dunes in Death Valley.

Wow - you could easily pass this off as a snow scene instead of sand. Neat shot.

AlanLichty said:

Wow - you could easily pass this off as a snow scene instead of sand. Neat shot.

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Thanks Alan, kinda holidayish.

Very dramatic and interesting processing, can you explain what you did? I don't recognize the peak in the backgroundI from my visit last winter.

A striking image. It has a magical, otherwordly feeling with the stars and vivid colors. What's creating the pink halo over the peak? I might have reduced the saturation a bit overall but otherwise it's very nicely composed.

I absolutly love this one.

This is what we all hope to achieve in an image—perfection. (I’m still trying...)

Just an awesome image. The composition, lighting and processing.

Nice image Jim. The pink is a bit much and the stars are elongated, but the overall is very nice.

Love this, Jim! Might crop a bit of the foreground, though.

Jim Dockery said:

Very dramatic and interesting processing, can you explain what you did? I don't recognize the peak in the backgroundI from my visit last winter.

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Thanks all for the comments!!

Jim, with respect to processing....basic moves in PS....I used perspective warp to rearrange the relative positions of the sand, sky, and mountains to place a little more emphasis on the mountains. I used transform warp to to lower the mountains on the left and right sides and raise the focal point mountain. I had purchased Boris FX Optics for PS a couple of months ago but hadn't had time to use it because of other projects. This was an experiment using Optics plugin in PS. I used a Sapphire day to night filter and a star filter to make it a night shot. I dodged and burn a bit using the history brush through a luminosity mask. I played with the color grading, changed the color hue a little and adjusted the saturation to a point I liked. I added the red highlight in back of the focal mountain and adjusted saturation to suit. I tried various crops and ended up with this one. There were a number of other moves, adjustment layers, a global orton blur, selective blurring in areas, etc. Turned out to be a big file. 15 to 20gbs.

Below is the original raw file that I jpeged. The view is looking SSE from about the middle of the dune field. It was shot about 4:00 pm last March.

That's quite the transformation given what you started with. Amazing processing.

This is in the realm of digital art. Very interesting transformation.

Wow, that was a lot of work! Thanks for the explanation. Amazing what modern digital tools can do.

Hey Jim, I finally got a chance to look at this (It's been busy with the 6 grandkids) and it was worth the wait to see! Wow... magical work of art. I really like what you got here. And thanks for showing the original, as at least for myself I can appreciate even more the transformation you made in this piece of art.

I don't know how much of your photography you print, but this is one that I would definitely print.

I am truly impressed!

JimFox said:

Hey Jim, I finally got a chance to look at this (It's been busy with the 6 grandkids) and it was worth the wait to see! Wow... magical work of art. I really like what you got here. And thanks for showing the original, as at least for myself I can appreciate even more the transformation you made in this piece of art.

I don't know how much of your photography you print, but this is one that I would definitely print.

I am truly impressed!

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Thanks much Jim, I appreciate you saying so...

wow. dreamy!