Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. 12,100' elevation. Long's Peak in the distance. Long exposure 137.0s. 105mm lens focal length. "Bulb" setting. Remote shutter release cable. Manual focus. The alpine tundra is heather colored this time of year. Light trails from two cars' taillights.
Image captured in RAW format. Processed in Apple's Aperture. Slight crop and minor rotation. Adjustments to contrast, exposure, curves, saturation and vibrancy. Filters applied in NikSoftware's Color Efex Pro: Graduated Neutral Density, Pro Contrast. Adjustments to sky, mountains and tundra in Viveza 2. Exported as tiff file. Resized and sharpened in PSElements 8. Converted to sRGB. "Save for web..."
[Sep. 7th, 2010 12:20:41 PM]
Soft grad ND filters, 0.6 & 0.9. That's what allowed for the long exposure to produce a balanced scene, as the sky was much brighter than the tundra.
[Sep. 12th, 2010 11:26:18 PM]
Hey, thanks for the votes. The reaction was mixed, but that's okay.
I did have an alternative image, but didn't choose it because I perceived the need to show the car taillight trails. I might have been wrong. The image w/o the light trails below. Better light on Long's Peak AND the terminator line make this a more attractive image. Live and learn.
Voting was not understandable on this challenge. Those who gave this image less than a 5, I'd like to hear from you!
Statistics
Place: 9 out of 82 Avg (all users): 6.3333 Avg (commenters): 7.0000 Avg (participants): 6.1389 Avg (non-participants): 6.4111 Views since voting: 2060 Views during voting: 254 Votes: 126 Comments: 14 Favorites: 2 (view)
Nice job Hahn. But what happened to the lights about half way up on the straight stretch? It's like they disappeared and the started again?
Those are car taillights. When the back of the car was visible to the camera, the taillights were more visible. When the side of the car turned towards the camera, the taillights were less visible. Seems obvious to me.
"Voting was not understandable on this challenge. Those who gave this image less than a 5, I'd like to hear from you!"
Fewer than 5% of the votes (5 out of 126) gave this less than a 5. That seems to me well within the "normal range" for outlier scores in DPC. Personally, for whatever it's worth, I gave it a 5. Had you entered the one sans light trails, I'd have given it a 4.
Why? Because, lovely as the image is, for me it's more a shot of the landscape, which happens to have an s-curve in it, than it is a shot featuring the s-curve. In the one you entered, the taillight trails accentuate the curve a bit more, hence the slightly higher score from me.
It's a nice image, nothing objectionable about it at all, just not as interesting a take on the challenge as many others, in my personal opinion.
Look at that, 9th Place! Great Job on this Stunning image!! (sorry, must have been sleepy! :) Amazing to get this in the lighting you did, I would have overblown it. Good Job!
This is so well done. Not only is it a beautiful scene, the photo is flawless. Sharp yet smooth, amazing tones, colors, and, most importantly for this challenge, the tail lights have completely illuminated the already existing S curve.
Best in the challenge in my opinion, and though I'm not voting, I'll fave this one if you don't mind.
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