Path and Light, Dovedale

I took this photo while Gill and I were on a little walk at the northern end of Dovedale heading south from the pretty village of Milldale.

It was taken at 3:10 pm on the 14th September 2024 and later developed from a single RAW file with Pixelmator Pro.

The footpath was quite busy with visitors on this sunny afternoon, so I had to work quickly and take the opportunity to grab a few shots when there were no walkers in view.

Capture

I took a few three-bracket compositions in anticipation of needing to blend exposures because of the large dynamic range of the scene.

Shots included a landscape-oriented composition featuring the path running diagonally from left to right, and this portrait-oriented one with the path dead centre.

I thought the latter worked best.

Development

To my surprise, the two-stop-bracketed exposure set didn’t capture the full dynamic range. So I chose to work with the middle exposure and accept that some of the highlights were blown.

As usual, lots of masked adjustment layers were applied to balance exposure, dodge, burn and generally emphasise the images attributes.

Subject

I wanted to bring the viewers’ attention to what I considered to be the main subject – the path and gate.

Having masked a circular gradient selection for this adjustment layer, I increased the vibrance of the yellows and greens of the subject. I then brightened the yellows and darkened the greens for separation. I also increased the exposure, contrast, texture and clarity, and reined in the highlights.

Negative Space

I decided that the perimeter and upper half of the composition would be useful as subject-supporting negative space with a subtle colour complement.

I gave the selected perimeter a cooler white balance, a little desaturation, negative texture and clarity, and applied Pixelmator’s “Bloom” effect to introduce a sort of Orton glow. This nicely dealt with the blown highlights.

I also emphasised the sunlight from the right with Pixelmator’s “Sunbeams” effect.

Pixelmator Pro

I’m quite familiar with this application now and really like it!

I’m still taking my time when developing photos for thoroughness and gathering a deeper understanding of what can be done.

I really love how adjustment and image layers are so easy to implement and understand.

In developing this image, I made a black and white version of the image for luminance masking, considering the dynamic range required from a single RAW file. I think the Pixelmator team will include luminance masking as standard feature in a future update.

One thing I’m a little frustrated with is that each adjustment layer has its own histogram. But each histogram reflects only the adjustments of its own layer. There isn’t a way to display an overall aggregated histogram reflecting all adjustments. Or if there is, I’ve not found it yet.

Apart from the latter, I find the software a refreshingly fast, powerful and an easy-to-learn powerhouse for my photography.

It’s apparently rather useful as a vector graphics application too, apparently. Maybe I might find the graphics aspect useful in replacing past-used applications like CorelDraw and Xara, if I ever need to.

Comments welcome below, as always 😊