49. Pointy

‘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

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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.

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16. Night Lights

‘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

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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.

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