On the last day of the workshop, Mark Stothard, Bruce and myself joined Dan from West Coast Active to do a canyoning trip through the Karijini gorges. Dan could get us into places that most people don’t see. At the point where all three gorges meet, you get to junction pool. There is this incredible tree growing out of the water, and we were lucky enough to get the rays of light hitting it before the sun started setting behind the cliff top. I loved the backlighting and contrast between the colours.
Processing Details:
- This was a single image (no HDR or exposure blending)… Who needs a Phase One anyway!!!
- I started off doing Bruce Margolis’s “Man from Mars” move on the image. I think I’ll be using this technique a lot for my Karijini images. It use LAB adjustments to essentially pull colours apart without saturating them. I liked the blues and reds in the cliff, and this technique allowed me to empahasise them without cranking up saturation.
- Then I did some dodge/burn on the cliff,
- Darkened the tree and water a bit by using a luminosity mask in multiply mode
- A bit of darkening of the edge using curves.
Plenty more Karijini stuff to come
Brent Pearson's Photo Journey 
Very nice Brent, love the water colour combined with the cliff colour.
Way better than the version I worked up Brent as I suspected! The wider view was the play and my 28mm was not wide enough…nice work mate!
Beautiful image Brent, great work on the colours and control of the light. I like the reflection of the tree in the dark water, very nice. I would love to see this on an A2 piece of Fuji Pearle (for the A1 you might actually need that Phase One ; ) Can’t wait for the rest of the photos, Have a nice day. Jerome.
Nice shot Brent. What’s the Bruce Margolis’s “Man from Mars” move?
Hey Alex
The Man from Mars move is a very cool technique I learned doing one of Bruce’s online courses. It basically separates colours rather than intensifying them… so if you want to emphasise two colours in a scene (like the red and blue in the gorge rock), this technique really makes them pop out WITHOUT resorting to saturation.
BP
Brent,
Did you enjoy the trip… its pretty special huh and as you said you get to see heaps of stuff that the others dont…… how did you like the slide ?
Nice shot mate, I like it lots
Hey Brent,
I think I have your Cokin polariser. It was left in the back of the Prado. Are you missing it?
mate if only you had a Phase!!! still it doesn’t like extremes, she is more of a 5 star girl! Excellent shot regardless of inadequate pixel count!! Well done, next year mate I am there.
I thought it was Dan Margolis?? Does he have a brother that is more talented, like me??
Sweet shot Brent, im sure the photo does the place no justice though, cant wait to get up that way one day!
Is this ‘man from mars technique’ similar to using the dcam3 colour space and assigning different chroma variants to increase saturation without actually using hue/sat layers etc?? im sure cf showed you this up there?
Cheers
Matt
Wow…. excellent work on the image.
Well done Brent, I like this one a lot. The sun really adds to the image! It reminds me of the water hole at Kings Canyon.
Very nice Brent. Love the water and cliff colours. For my liking the tree foliage looks a little too bright.
Hey Mark
Yeah I am missing my polariser, I thought it must have dropped out in a gorge somewhere.
Is it scratched up or OK?
Brent
Hey Christian
You are right as usual…. it is Dan Margolis that is the colour guru…. have you read or watched any of his tutorials?
By next year you’ll be hurling the Phase off waterfalls without thinking about it…. If Kenny D can, surely you can… although he does have god on his side.
BP
Hi Mathew
No the “Man from Mars” move is different to using chroma varients. They impact global saturation (without distorting colours).
I’ll post a video on the Man from Mars technique in a few weeks…. I’m just backlogged right now and trying to get through my Karijini processing.
BP
Great shot Brent, it looks like an amazing place. The processing on the image really shows those amazing colours while maintaining a natural balance to the scene.
Stunning shot Brent. Karijini is high on my list of WA locations to get to. Given you’re at the bottom of the gorge is midday the best time to shoot for lighting?
Hey Chris
Thanks for your comment. When shooting the general gorges, the best time of day to shoot is 2-3 hours after sunrise and before sunset. Ideally you do not want much direct sun down in the gorges, you want reflected light bouncing around otherwise it blows out your shots wherever you get direct light falling.
For the above shot, you do want to be there before around 1PM. While we were there, the sun was going behind the cliff and we saw the light disappearing from the tree.