North Umpqua River near Steamboat, Oregon

Canon 30D, 17-40 f/4L, Tripod: yes, Filter: circular polarizer, Post: Lightroom

The North, as the locals refer to the North Fork of the Umpqua River, is one of the most beautiful reaches of river in Oregon.  Fall is a wonderful time to capture the golden reflections of riparian vegetation in quiet pools.  Much of the North is accessible from a state highway so finding a good photo point is not a problem.

The above capture was taken on a cloudless day so the photo had lots of blue color cast in the shadow areas.  The grey rocks in the river had really absorbed the blue from the sky.  After the photo was imported into Lightroom I used the targeted adjustment tool (TAT) in the HSL panel to desaturate the blue and restore a more accurate color balance.  As I have mentioned before in this blog, the TAT is a very slick tool to adjust color, saturation, luminance, and the tone curve.  For this photo the TAT was also used to bump up the color saturation and adjust the luminosity to make the yellow and orange colors pop.  The photo below is the original out of the camera, note the color of the rocks.