Darkroom Challenge Digital Darkroom Derby #110 (closed, results posted)

WhidbeyLVR

WhidbeyLVR

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Location
Whidbey Island
Name
Lyle
This is Digital Darkroom Derby #110, a digital image editing/processing challenge.

Please read the rules here. Short version: Host provides the challenge image and selects the winner, who then becomes the next host.

P2280275.JPG
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Windy Point Vista on Mount Lemmon Highway, north of Tucson AZ.

The RAW and JPG files are here.

The challenge will close at 13:00 Pacific Daylight Time on Tuesday, April 4th. Enjoy!
 
Entry #1

Interesting photo. There are so many subtleties in the colour and texture of the rocks....... And of the vegetation too, for that matter. There is also a fair bit of haze in the background. I found myself counting the people in the photograph. Every time I counted, I seemed to find one more. The last time it was 9. How many do you see?

I imported the ORF file into Capture One Pro 23 and played around a bit with Exposure, Highlight, Shadow, Clarity and Dehaze. I cropped the image to a 16:9 aspect ratio, but decided that lost the impression of height and so cropped the image to 3:2.

DDD110.jpg
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Entry #2

As for Entry #1, but first fed the ORF file through DxO PureRAW 3, before importing the resulting DNG file into Capture One Pro 23.
I wound back the Sharpening and increased the White Balance temperature slightly to 5800K, before continuing on as usual.

DDD110-ORF.jpg
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Many thanks to all of you who participated. The last few challenges have had fewer entries, but I hope this isn't a permanent change. I am sorry to see that one entry was withdrawn.

I had played with this image before the challenge, and found several issues, and they became central to my evaluation of the entries:
  • The first concern was too many people. My usual preference is ONE -- one person, one couple, one family or group. But bodies spread randomly about the scene is rarely a good thing. (BTW, I concur with @griffljg on 9 people.)
  • The second concern was the oddly sooty sky with low brightness and contrast, and a slight brownish color cast.
  • The third problem was how (or if) to crop the image. I agree with Larry that cropping too much reduces the feeling of height in the scene, but the differences were not huge.
  • The final issue was how to treat the white balance. The SOOC jpeg (which is in the original post) is quite different from DxO's warmer default processing (which is close to the posted jpeg source image).
Your submissions dealt with some or all of these factors, so thanks! I liked all the entries!

Since there are only nine entries, I'm just going straight to results:

Winner: @betamax -- One person in the scene, improved sky brightness and contrast, mild crop, pleasant colors. Overall, a really nice result.

2nd Place: @Zeus1 B&W entry -- I liked the balanced rendering and grayscale in this entry, and you sidestepped the color issue.

3rd Place: @griffljg #1 -- Minimal crop and nice color and contrast.

Let's see what Alan brings us in the next challenge
 
Thanks for the win Lyle!

9 people? I thought it was 6 or 7...

Yes, I got a little lazy on this one and used Luminar. The AI mode does tend to iron out the poor contrast and color casts, but it's hit-and-miss. with some time spent on the HSL and detail sliders and some masks I got the colours and contrast I thought worked best.

Yes, the last 3 or 4 challenges have been very quiet. I might let this next one run a few more days because of that, and as folks are likely to be distracted by easter too etc.

New challenge is up and is here: Challenge! - Digital Darkroom Derby #111
 

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