Meadow, Oak Forest, and Cliffs – Autumn, Yosemite Valley. Yosemite National Park, California. October 31, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn color on meadow, forest, and cliffs at Yosemite Valley, California.

If it isn’t clear by now… I really like photographing the “treescape” of Yosemite Valley – at any time of the year but especially in the fall.

This was a technically challenging photograph to produce. Several things attracted me to the scene including the color of the shaded oak in the right foreground, the subtle light on the tree trunks coming from the reflection from a cliff that is far out of the frame to the left, the very yellow tree just left of the center of the frame, and the sunlit slopes of the Valley walls beyond, carpeted with trees. In addition to finding the right spot to “see” all of this, the exposure issues were challenging.

Dynamic range was obviously one issue. The foreground oak and certain other elements are in relatively dark shade, yet these areas include important details. At the same time, the far cliff is in full sun and – to add to the fun – includes some very reflective sections of rock that are extremely bright. The solution for me was to make two exposures – one for the shaded foreground areas and another for the distant and very bright cliff. The two images were then blended in post-production using masks. (For those who know the term “HDR,” this is not HDR.)

The second problem had to do with color balance and/or color perception. Though you might not “see” it while standing there looking at the scene, there are some very complex issues here with the color of the light. On one hand there are elements that naturally have very warm tones, including parts of the meadow in the sun and that small very yellow oak tree left of center. But other elements are actually very blue – the foreground, shaded vegetation and parts of the meadow because they are illuminated primarily by the very blue open sky above, and the distant hillside because of the haze in the Valley. Our eyes and brain “correct” for this when we are on the scene and we don’t recognize these color issues – to us it just “looks the way it looks” when we are standing there. However, put this lighting in a photograph “as is” and it looks quite wrong! So I had to make some selective color adjustments to move these areas a bit away from the blue tones and in the case of the far cliff to desaturate a bit. Some of this could be done in a general way, but other parts of it had to be done bit by bit using masks.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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