Summer Colors!

Earlier this summer when there was color.


Rainier from Plummer Peak, Tatoosh range. Mid-day light, filtered through high clouds.

you can even turn the mid day light into good light.. how do you do that??
This is an enormous scene, nicely captured!

Thomas, thanks. Actually, I just got lucky with some high clouds blocking most of the harsh light, but letting just enough through to make the colors pop and bring out the contrasts. It was a rare opportunity. The scale here is simply incomprehensible even to those who see this in person. From the bottom of that valley to the summit your looking at is eleven thousand vertical feet of relief, more than two miles. In other words, that's nearly the same vertical rise one would see at the base of Everest looking towards the summit! It's a BIG mountain.

What a beatiful photo. Nice going. She's a bald rock this time of year but still stunning! The color in the foreground is such a delight to see.

Catherine Reilly
Seattle, WA

Great shot, Marc. Love the scale and this lighting is very complimentary to this scene.

Marc: Please share with me how you do your post processing. I am having trouble (as you have seen) getting my images to POP without over-saturation. You seem to have mastered this method.

Thanks in advance.

Randy, there just is not a simple way to answer this question. It truly varies a lot from one image to the next (and I personally think I over-did the saturation here just a smidge). There are so many ways to selectively increase saturation and fine-tune contrasts that it would be hard to cover it in less than a chapter of a book. I would start by experimenting with the following methods.

First, do not saturate the entire image at once more than just a little. The trick is identifying HOW and WHERE to make enhancements post capture (there are also innumerable factors that influence color in-camera which I don't have time to discuss).
Lets say I have some beautiful Heather, Monkeyflowers or Paintbrush that are brilliantly pink/red and want to make them 'pop' without oversaturating the sky blues or grass greens. In RAW, I could saturate only the reds. I could also select the red channel [windows-channels] and increase saturation using editing tools if working with JPEG's or scans. With a fewer flowers, I could zoom in and select a 'sponge' tool which, when applied to certain areas will either increase or decrease saturation. I find this tool especially helpful when fine-tuning an image because it allows me to work the image saturation levels much like a dodge/burn and do so very accurately. These are just some basic tricks for working with color. It's very complicated and of course, in Photoshop there are ten ways to do almost everything. Good luck.

Great intro and thanks.

Marc,
Really a beautifully presented shot. I really enjoy looking at it. Also, thanks for the info.

A grand view Marc, great shot.

Great!

VERY VERY NICE!! I can easily see this in a large frame.

Wow. Stunning. Beautiful.

There are so many things going on here, but they all seem to bring strength to the image. Well done.