What's going on in that place?! Everything looks like it's on another planet! Anyways, one of the guys suffered an emergency guyectomy, because the photo looks better with only one of them. A guy standing on top of things is this photographer's signature look.
Other than removing the surplus dude - and his shadow! - I didn't do anything here.
...and some horses. This is the famous Apricot Valley in China. Unfortunately, I couldn't source the photo, but it looked too good to skip. Beautiful lighting and composition.
As per usual, I darkened and sharpened the image so that it works better as wallpaper (at least for my taste).
I mean, the Saturation slider does go to all the way to the end. Doesn't mean it has to.
Other than the unbelievable saturation level, great photo with great lighting and great atmosphere. There'll be more photos from this photographer, and he really does have a way with light. Oh yeah, there are some halos around the hills (see Pet Peeve #3), but here I'd say that's real mist, and not sharpening/clarity artefacts.
I set the color saturation to a more believable level, and fixed general contrast.
I find this to be very calming, and I like the two-color scheme. The crescent and the bush are nice points of interest. I had to reframe the photo since it was a portrait, but here I actually like the landscape version more - it got rid of unnecessary detail. I don't find the underwater rocks that were in the foreground that interesting
I darkened the image somewhat because it works better as a wallpaper for me that way. As a bonus, that also brings out the fog above the lake.
Enrico Fossati. I am of a two minds about this photographer. On the one hand, he is intresting, covers some impressive subjects in an impressive way, and does have a unique post-processing style. From his site: I am a world-renown image editor for my specific processing and production. On the other hand, world-renowned or not, I am not sure I like that post-processing style. It is interesting in a photo or two, but once you use it in all your photos, they all start looking the same. Just try going to his site, and looking at the thumbnails of his photos side by side - they all meld together. To add insult to injury, the heavy post-processing that removes color from the photos, boosts contrast to insane levels and even adds-in localized (fake) lighting kinda cheapens the subject matter (which is impressive in its own right) and makes it not look real. Not everything should look like Rivendell.
So I changed this quite a lot. While I can't be exactly sure, this looks more like a sunrise than sunset to me, so I dialed it more into yellow. I returned some color to the image, because the orange monochrome was a bit much for me. I also returned some detail which was washed out by the flare - which I am also pretty sure was added in later. He has another image from the same series here. That one seems closer to what the real thing looked like, but appears to be stretched vertically. Anyway, that's where I borrowed the clouds from, because I did like the atmosphere of the original photo I chose more. I had to be very subtle though, because making the clouds too detailed behind the flare would make them look fake. So there's just a little more detail in them, mostly around the sun.
I think Yosemite Park is the most frequent subject over on r/EarthPorn. I guess it's really impressive in person, but I don't like almost any photo of it. I find the shapes of Half-dome and El Capitan to be blocky, which makes for - to me - static and uninteresting images. This one is the best I found. It has a nice depth, with the trees in the foreground and sunset light in the background. The atmosphere and the colors make up for the blockiness of the shapes.
