• Selected on Aug 30, 2020
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Aug 31, 2020

I took this picture in August 2016. In plain, broad daylight, around noon, with no clouds to obstruct the sun. I was attracted by the shapes the water left in the wet mud and by the small stone lying on it. The only shadow in the picture coming from that very stone (I didn't put it there in order to achieve some compositional effect). Then, I came back home, looked at the picture in Photoshop and didn't know what to do with it. The picture looked flat, the structures in the sand were beautiful but not enough to make an impact. Then, this year, August 2020, I visited that area again, and upon coming back home I checked the old folder to see if the glacier receeded. And I looked again at this picture and knew within seconds that the only way to make it work was to take a full departure from reality. Only like that, I could create tridimensionality (by darkening the depths and lightening the crests), enhance the delicate differences existing between the color tones and make those mud rivulets have an impact. I also wanted it to be mysterious and not reveal itself within one second. The stone was a bonus. I basically worked with very simple instruments: one layer for doge and burn, one for color balance and one for saturation. However applied not generally but for different zones. At the end I added a Orton-Layer to reduce a bit from the harshness of the details. What I most liked, once I was done, was the dual perspective: it is a close-up but has something from the bird's eye view. The stone seems to lie in the sand, but it actually lies on the sand.


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