Petroglyphs In The Tablelands

Well, I guess some might call this digital art. I took the original image which wasn't under the lighting conditions that I felt fit the mood of the place. So I played with this in PS to try and create a lighting scheme which matched, as best as my skills will allow, what I pictured in my mind(a fuzzy concept at best ) What I'd like to do in the future is actually shoot this scene under a full moon, and then use a flashlight to paint in the petroglyphs. This is what I've tried to do here in PS. Kind of like a moch setup for now.

We went out on Mon. in the tablelands doing some exploring, looking for petroglyphs and anything else we could find. These petroglyphs are really neat to stand next to and touch the rock, trying to visualize a guy carving these and just what they might mean.

Just thought I'd share.....

Have a good day!

Cory,

This is an interesting concept. I would like to see it developed further. In this example, I think it is overall too dark; especially the background. I'd like to see a bit more detail there to give the image more depth. The idea of shooting this under moonlight is excellent!

I would love to see these glyphs. You'll have to take me to this spot. It looks vrey cool!

-PB

Cory,

You're reaching in to Michael Frye territory. This is great - especially after seeing the original and knowing you did this all in PS. Well done! I'd like to know more about some of the steps you used. Obviously, masking was involved here.

I agree with Preston, in that you could increase the background lightness. There's enough room where it would still appear as a night time shot and still have depth as well.

Very creative endeavor!
Lon

Wow, that did show up a bit darker than it looked on my display. Well, it is a work in progress and was a way to get some ideas on paper, or, pixels.

Preston: I'd be happy to show ya. These are ones right along the road(fish slough) near Red Rock Canyon.
Lon: It's funny you mention Frye's work. I was thinking about his night work today, the ones where he used colored gels on the strobes. Let me see, what did I do in PS with this?(scratching my head). I did normal color corrections first then experimented with a lot of stuff. Let's see.... probably the biggest thing was to use the filter-render-lighting effects and just experimented with that until I got the desired effect on the petroglyphs I also changed the layer mode to multiply. Then did a quick mask of the 'glyphs so I could darken the background. I tried to make the bg look like it was underexposed during a full moon. So I used a saturation layer and desaturated the sky a bit and set it's blending mode to saturate. I also have a color balance adj. layer to take some of the color out of the bg rock, again using the mask to do so. I also added a photo filter layer to add some warmth to the fg light, to give it the look of a warm temp flashlight. Basically I just experimented and played around 'til it got close to what I wanted. Though, I realized today that it still is far from what I really want to capture. When is full moon? May have to do that soon. Hope that helped.

edit: Just when you think you've got an original idea........I looked at Frye's website and saw his rock art series. It's been along time since I visited his site. I was thinking of his joshua trees today. Didn't know he had the rock art series. Pretty cool. That's kinda what I had in mind. But a bit different.

Lovely idea! I like your composition and the way it presents the petroglyphs in relation to the larger landscape. Like Preston, I want the rest of the image to be not so dark. Hopefully, that is easy to change if you agree.

Thanks.