Not your everyday Subway shot +REPOST

The real reason I went to Zion about a month ago was to get a shot of the Subway with huge icicles clinging to the roof of the tunnel. Guy Tal provided me the inspiration with his arsenal of incredible winter Subway images. Do to the warm temps I knew my chances of icicles in the subway were low. I went anyway. Twenty feet from my car, in the muddy sand I read “No icicles in the Subway.” Somebody had carved the inevitable truth into the sand for me. Well, that about put an end to my dream shot.

At any rate I still had all day to enjoy the great West Canyon all by myself.

I decided to refresh my panoramic skills in the Subway because of a recent Phil Noll NPN thread to a link to a interesting perspective of the Subway.

The following image is a PP nightmare. Here are the details.



-12 image stitch. 6 verticals across the top, 6 verticals across the bottom. I use a Nodal Ninja pano head and use Ptgui 7.2 pro stitching software.
-Each of the 12 images is a blend of at least 2, sometimes 3 exposure blends, all saved in TIFF. Each image is hand blended to match the next. This portion of the PP took me 4 hours.
-Next I stitched the 12 final images to a 1 gig TIFF, including unnecessary canvas.
-I followed up with a nice crop to down size, then added my Curves to taste, Selective color, Vibrance and Saturation to taste. There’s a little Luminosity masking in there too.

Yea, it was a lot of work but I’m posting it to be critiqued. It’s a different perspective of an Iconic scene that typically gets photographed with a Wide lens, most notably a 14mm. Keep in mind the pano will look different; likely because our eyes have been "trained" to take on the wide-angle lens properties that we see in every Subway image from this exact spot.

Worst image I've ever seen! If you believe that, I have a bridge i can sell you.

Kane, this is absolutely amazing! The detail is incredible...sharp, colors are spot on, exposure, depth...everything about it screams perfection! You need to find a place to hang and sell this one for sure. Best one I've ever seen from here!

My perspective is different than Jack's.
I'm usually a big fan of your work as you choose scenes that are unique and often involve a herculean amount of effort to capture.
And I greatly respect and appreciate the vast amount of work that you put into this image. The 'development'
and quality are just about flawless. I also appreciate your desire to capture something different from yet another iconic view.
In the end however, this resembles nearly every other shot of this icon that I've seen aside from the lack of autumnal leaves and lack of better light in the tunnel itself.

I wanted to post the typical Iconic perspective with a 14mm lens. There is a 2-ft wide rock bridge that parts the pool of water in my image from another pool of water behind, not shown in this image. There is basically nowhere to go, except for this spot to set a tripod up. I found my 14mm to work well at the time I shot this image. To get the entire scene in the frame at 14mm you have to mount the camera about Eye level/Shoulder high, and literally shoot "down" at the pool. The submitted pano is a completely different perspective from the iconic 14mm image, and both were taken from the exact spot. Lastly, the pano was shot at about Knee High, thus the flat immediate foregound edge.
http://www.kaephotography.com/photo/the-subway/

Sure, better light and fall color take an image to the next level. Add both to the pano and I honestly don't know which perspective I like better. However I do think there is something to be said about the fact the pano image can print 4 times the size of the 14mm image.

I admire your ambition and the skills it took to produce a pano of this magnitude (mirroring John Mumaw's comments above) but in the end I feel strangely disconnected from the reality of The Subway. It also seems too much was cropped from the top of the image.

Doug Beezley
Snellville, GA

I noticed that on the far righthand side of the image that some of the lines and shadows in the rocks reapeat themselves. I suppose this might be due to so many images being stitched and blended.

Kane, the saturation and wet look give this an initial WOW impression. A few nits from my perspective would be that the reds seem too saturated for my taste, and the upper left water pour-over seems overexposed. Overall the image seems cropped too tight from above, but a person who has not been there may not notice.
I like the lower perspective you took and how the circular hole in the lower left is eclipsed more by the foreground edge.

I agree with JM that it's not really an out-of-the-box type of Subway shot, but it's still killer. One correction I would make is to take some of the vibrant red of the rock and move it closer to a red-orange. It looks too far towards a magenta-red to my eye.

Mike, nice eye. What your seeing is the end result of some sloppy cloning. Todd, I'll do some color correcting and repost later tonight. Doug, I'll recrop the image with more of the subway open roof with my repost.

It's a nice shot, but like John said, my first reaction was - oh, another subway shot. As for overall aesthetics and uniqueness quotient, I far prefer this other pano posted on your site! Now that one is sweet, with better colors and dynamic visual flow.

You've caught quite the icon fever lately, eh? Say it ain't so!!!

I agree this is an excellent shot. The detail is over the top good and should contribute to a fantastic huge print. The color is beautiful, although I have never been there, so I can't speak to it's being accurate.
I'm glad Jack posted the other version, as I do like the flow in that one even more. All worth the trip there for sure.

Overall, I like the comp but the reds look unnaturally strong on my monitor.

Here’s the final image. NPN won’t let me repost a 2nd “larger file” so I’m submitting it via my website.

It’s a combination of the thorough feedback from my first post. I adjusted the crop to include additional ceiling, to relax a tighter comp that bothered a few including myself. I removed the weird, unnecessary cloning thing on the far right (thanks Michael.) I simmered down on the reds/magentas, and added a bit more yellows.

Let me know.

Kane

http://www.kaephotography.com/photo/test/

As one who has dabbled in creating different types of panos, I really can appreciate the effort that went into this image. I could not detect any issues with your technical creation part of this image.
Being I am not familiar with the site, at first I had a difficult time trying to figure out what i was seeing. As others had mentioned, if you have an ability not to crop so much of the top, it would be outstanding.

I like it, Kane--wish there was a bit more glow in the tunnel (which would have made it even more 'typical') but the detail is awesome.

Wow! The repost made a huge difference to my eye. I'm especially taken with the wall detail in the upper left quadrant area. Viewing it upon a black background makes a difference, too.

Excellent revision!
It's amazing how relatively small changes can improve a composition.

What focal length were you shooting?

My opinion of the first post was the same an John's, but the repost is gorgeous, Kane. I really appreciate the craftsmanship that went into making it.

The repost is a huge improvement. I like the other version that Jack referred to very much as well. Both are excellent. The repost de-emphasizes the glow of the tunnel and gives more attention to the detail in the rock.

Kane, the repost is a great improvement. I do like the pano format as it really does open up the pool. I also really like the other photo that Jack linked to, it is a unique perspective I hadn't seen before.

I liked all three posted, and agree that Jack's link is particularly "Kane" unique. I would be happy with any of them, but your repost is the better of the three super job!