Been going through my whole library to finally start on a new website. Spent all day and still have a ton more to work on but took a break when I got back to a Canyon De Chelley pano I did and thought of enhancing it some. Still playing but I kind of like this version. If I was not feeling sick i would have hung out longer but i did what I could.
Hi Guy, hope you are recovering. I hope you are open for some editing critique, it's a fantastic image but I like discussing editing.
I'd say the sky is really important in your pano, could even be the main subject and could use more definition perhaps?
Also, one thing I'm always careful about when I have a lit object (the canyon) and the light source (the sky) in the same image is to avoid the appearance that the lit object receives more light than the light source emits. OK, in shorter words, parts of the canyon are slightly too well lit.
One thing that's really useful, whether in the field or in post-processing, is to use a warm grad to get rid of some of the blue in the shaded foreground. I think this image could benefit from that too, the bushes along the creek have a blue tint, as do cliffs. When shooting 8x10 film at dawn or dusk I often sandwich an ND grad with an upside down warm grad.
My guess is that in this image I would start with getting the sky "right" (subjectively), and then match the light level and temperature in the canyon to appear natural in relation to the sky. Then finally perhaps lift the whole image to make the tonal range printable.
But that's just me, and my own taste. How did you approach it?
