Yesterday Morning

I don't know how many of you saw the sunrise yesterday morning, but up here in Estes it was epic. I was going to be in the mountains but instead headed down to Lake Estes. The lake had partially thawed creating a nice canvas for the amazing light that followed. Here are three images from the morning. I know that these seem over the top saturated but I haven't added any saturation and this is pretty close to what you would have seen if you were up here.

Here's a closeup of a section of that ice.

And here's what things looked like during a couple minutes of very red light.

And one last one to show that I turned the camera vertically.

DAMN! That is an incredible sunrise! Great stuff, Erik.

Catch a wave (cloud)! I love the subtlety of the ice/water detail. The sky color has taken on that Canon extreme look that I don't care for, but I haven't yet found a way around it.

Todd, if you figure it out let me know. I've tried a bunch of stuff to tone these down but without much success.

Amazing stuff here Erik...that first one is to die for!

Beautiful! Tuesday was amazing down here, but I had to get ready for work, now that I finally have a real job again.

Yeah i feel Todd's pain, the 5ds just go bananas with the reds. Anyhow, looks pretty wicked, Erik. I like the vertical the best. The landscape above it looks like it might have some flare or something,

Thanks guys. Stan, you are right. There is some flare there. It was really quite bad in the original. I guess I'll have to keep working at it. Are there any special tricks to dealing with flare in post-processing?

That's some vivid color! I really like it. The third image is my favorite overall, the comp is wonderful. To reduce the flare I would maybe just select all of the mountain areas and darken them a bit more. There doesn't seem to be a huge need for shadow detail there. Or you might instead try selecting the areas with the most flare in PS and using a Selective Color layer add cyan to the reds and/or blacks to get rid of the reddish flare spots. I also like the pastel colors of the second image, nice job Erik.

Nice shots! The first is may favorite as the colors look more natural than the last two.

The best way I've found to improve the Canon reds is to move the exposure slider left in Lightroom and, if necessary, use highlight recovery until the far right side of the histogram is blank, with the image looking underexposed but the colors more natural. Then, edit in Photoshop and do a Levels adjustment - adjust the right slider and center slider to taste. For some reason, the levels adjustment in PS doesn't seem to create the funky reds as much as adjusting everything in Lightroom. Then again, I haven't dealt with this much red, so it may or may not work. Another thing to try is to slightly underexposure the shot in camera, which breaks the rule of exposing to the right, but might help here.

Also, the easiest way I've found to deal with flare is Tony Kuyper's "Cloning Color, Retaining Texture" http://goodlight.us/writing/cloningcolor/cloningcolor-1.html

Thanks for the input Joshua and Grant. I actually didn't blow out the red channel at all. I also tried your suggestion Grant but still wasn't able to fix it. Here's what my LR screen looks like.

The first is my favorite. Sweet!

What camera profile are you using in LR?
When it comes to brilliant reds, I find myself cycling through the profiles to check the alternatives.
I can't say that solves the issue, but you may find a better starting point.

Thanks Bill! I just had a look and the Neutral profile helped a little bit. Most of the other profiles only seemed to intensify the colors even more or changed it in other unhelpful ways. I still dream of the day when I can push the button on my camera and have it be an exact representation of what I saw. I may choose to adjust the image, but at least I would have a reliable basis to begin with. Unfortunately, it is an almost impossible dream.

Lovely photos, Erik. Try being a Canon shooter living in red rock country. That really sweet, warm light of sunrise and sunset can be very difficult for Canon sensors to capture. Often, multiple exposures are needed to control it. Frustrating, but it is what it is.

Thanks Bret, the thing is I'm not sure if multiple exposures would have helped as it all fit on the histogram, even the red channel with plenty of space to the right, as you can see in the post about half way through this thread. Hmm?

Love the shot, Erik. But you're right the reds are easy to blow out. I underexpose anything with red in it so there's a decent amount of room on the right of the histogram, sometimes by as much as a full stop below what the camera shows as a good exposure.

Awesome color! There is one way I can think of around the Canon Red blues; Nikon. Just playin'.

I checked your histograms in Photoshop and it shows the reds blown out. Even the screen grab from Lightroom is shown as blown out in PS, when it clearly isn't in Lightroom. If it was a straight screen grab with no adjustments, my only guess is that when converting from ProPhoto RGB in Lightroom to sRGB for the web, the conversion causes the reds to get blown out. I'd recommend pushing the histogram even farther left in Lightroom, then check the histogram after converting to sRGB in Photoshop before uploading to the web.

Hey, I gave up on using the landscape picture style in Garden of the Gods at sunrise. I shoot with the faithful picture style selected, then move the tone slider all the way to the right (green) side, otherwise they look like they were painted with tempura paints by a second-grader. It's just a Canon thing, and I wish they'd fix it.

Wow, I saw that sunrise down here in Boulder but....daaammmnnnn! That's incredible!

Sometimes epic conditions are hard to render as a photo - but that sky was truly gorgeous. BTW - It was fantastic in central Denver this morning.

Incredible sky! I think Grant is on the right track regarding the reds. What rendering intent are you using when converting from ProPhoto to sRGB? It looks like the reds that are out of gamut are being rendered to the next red that is in gamut (Relative Colorimetric). With Perceptual Intent all colors are shifted till they are all within gamut. Might look better, might not. Play around with the different rendering intents and see if it makes any difference.

I don't know if I have ever seen a sunrise that red. The first two are the best ones to me, with the #2 closeup being my prime choice. I like how the edge of the ice appears to be lit by a UV blacklight. I think that recovering some of the clipped reds in #1 helps the image.