‘Niagara Revealed’ - Horseshoe Falls, Niagara Falls, Canada-USA border
photo by Christoph Fischer
website - https://beautysurroundsyou.com/
original image - https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50452656382_91b0634dc2_b.jpg
Niagara Falls are grand just by themselves, but this moody lighting and great camera angle makes them spectacular.
I removed the sun from behind the mist, it was looking like white blotch.
A winding road north of Montreal, Québec, Canada
photo by Petunia-Rivers
website - https://www.reddit.com/user/Petunia-Rivers/
original image - https://i.redd.it/foso4l8ieji21.jpg
I usually don't like too radical color grading (unless I do it), but this photo is an exception. It found it on reddit's I Took A Photo. It's the classic, overused teal-and-orange color scheme, and I love it anyway. The road so oversaturated that it actually turned teal somehow looks great. The shallow depth-of-field also looks great. It's just one of those photos that shoud be unremarkable, but it just happens to strike you the right way. But I agree with one of the reddit commenters, it was missing a point of interest. Hence the snail. So it's a composit.
Unfortunatelly, it had a terrible vignette that I had to get rid of. I also darkened the whole things while I was at it.
’The Beautiful Gloom’ - North Vancouver rainforest, British Columbia, Canada
photo by Tristan Todd
website - https://www.tristantodd.photography/
original image - https://i.redd.it/72szoz3idaq61.jpg
What a great photo. That's all I have to say.
Didn't do much of anything to it.
‘The Rockies’ - Banff National Park, Canadian Rockies, Alberta, Canada
photo by Christian D’Antonio
website - https://500px.com/p/chrischrisdan/
original image - https://i.redd.it/jzfz84b6unn71.jpg
This one is a strange pick for me. It is heavily edited, with the mountains stretched vertically to make them more impressive (the photographer posted his process here, check it out). I usually prefer photos that are more true to reality. But when I was choosing them, this one somehow always stayed in the selection, because - edited or not - it has a great atmosphere and really is striking. So here it is.
There was quite a lot of work on it, because while the above editing was great artistically, technically it was not. There were obvious and ugly edges on the mountains from imprecise cutouts, and some weird banding and colors in the clouds from over-processing.
‘Peyto Lake Aurora’ - Peyto Lake, Banff National Park, Canadian Rockies, Canada
photo by James Michael Andrew
website - https://www.jamesandrewphotography.com/
original image - https://f8n-ipfs-production.imgix.net/QmQfMPkZeSJoWfhFmvRrMcat4L3qHoJBgbZkb6swfhxhvX/nft.jpg?q=80&auto=format%2Ccompress&cs=srgb&max-w=1680&max-h=1680
Finding nice aurora photos can be tricky. The low light conditions usually means photographers will use long exposure to shoot them, but that means - see my Pet Peeve #1 - that anything moving in the photo, including the aurora itself, will turn into mush. Or you'll have a grainy photo. Well, there isn't any of that here, and the result is a beautiful and atmospheric photo.
I just upped the contrast a bit to bring out the aurora more, and removed the vignette - see my Pet Peeve #2.
Brady's Beach, Bamfield, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
photo by Sean Holroyd
website - https://www.instagram.com/seanhphotography/
original image - https://i.redd.it/1l48njrmdni71.jpg
Some… rocks on a sandy beach? I don’t know, but this is a type of composition I like for a wallpaper. Visualy interesting subject, nice colors, and simple and clean composition. Especially the repeating subject (the rock formations) at different depths in the frame. I’ll post more photos with the same pattern.
Didn’t do much to the photo, since the colors and contrast were nice to start with, just brought the detail out of the shadows, and sharpened things a bit.
