Landscapes. I don't like them all that much. When I look through my best work, there is the occasional sunrise/sunset, or other image that could be classified as a landscape, but it's always other elements that draw me to them, like colour, or their lines, the way they divide the frame, yet make up a picture as the whole. . . the texture, or something.

I don't dispute their place in photography, I don't have a problem with others liking them or being really good at them. They just don't make me "feel". So, not surprisingly, when I saw assignment 4 for PWDP, which is on landscapes (albeit with the digitally altering spin to it) I was not exactly excited. Yet, my mind immediately started working on it. And I know I'm still months away from it, but I think that assignment will be my biggest challenge. I also feel it's an opportunity to do some of my best work. So I already have a few ideas. . . whether I'll be able to do it is another question. Whether it will be any good, is even another question. . . but I'm going to try. As I cannot see myself going the traditional landscapes route (no pun intended. Ok, maybe just a little bit of a pun)

So, looking through my growing collection of photography books, I was not surprised not to find many on landscapes. There are a few of Ansel Adams - who doesn't have those? And then there is the Michael Freeman Landscape and Nature book which is part of the reading list for this course. I decided to explore a bit while working on these two projects, which is evidently about landscapes. And the very first sentence in the Freeman book jumped out at me. It talks about what contributes to the success of a landscape pics - whether it's a specific element that made it successful, or the way in which the photographer interpreted them. And that kind of sold me on all of this.

Interpretation, I can live with. So I've kind of made up my mind about where I'd like to go with the landscape assignment (four, which is months away) and I probably will still change my mind and revise my ideas a million times before I get there. But for now I feel brave.

As far as these two projects are concerned - 15 and 22, they kind of took on a merging life of their own and I decided they belonged together, so I'm doing the write up for both of them here. This is the original image:

In Project 15: Adding a New Sky, the landscape layer was placed on top of the sky, and the darker colour blending mode was used in order to make the new sky show through. This method was ideal because of the gaps in the tiny branches along the horizon of the landscape, which would be horribly painstaking to mask by hand. There were only one or two small areas that didn't blend very well. But instead of going in with the eraser tool, I used a mask instead, so that I could paint on and off pixels as necessary. A medium sized soft brush at 100% opacity was used to do a quick cleanup of those areas, followed by a small soft brush at 15% opacity to finish off the edges. At that point, the sky felt a little bit off, so I stretched that layer just a little bit to make it feel more comfortable. I then made one final pass with the small soft brush on the upper layer's mask.

In Project 22: An Improvement in Weather - the sky swapped out really well, and I was mostly happy with the results. But I felt that the landscape part of the image was too dull at that point. It seemed like the perfect candidate for an Improvement in Weather. I used a number of adjustment layers to make the changes to the landscape layer. All of them were clipped to the landscape layer so that they would not affect the sky as well. I used one Hue/Saturation layer to adjust the tones, and one Vibrance layer to adjust the richness of the colours - Since changing to CS4, I usually prefer this to Saturation, because it tends to feel more natural. I also used 2 different Levels layers to increase the depth of the image. Each one was masked so as to affect specific areas. One layer addresses the trees in the distance, and the other addresses the field. I chose tones that were richer and more vibrant, working with the sky in mind - Meaning that it's a brighter day, with good light, and colours should be more prominent/rich. Also, since it is partly cloudy, and we're not exactly sure where in the sky the sun is hiding (not in the frame), the lack of shadows is ok.