Fumaroles, Pacaya Volcano, Guatemala.

Another shot from my Latin American trip. Several of these fumaroles exist at the top of the volcano, spitting out smoke, steam and the sulphur which can be seen as a yellowish crust in the picture. Some careful contrast control was required in Photoshop (PS) with this image in order to present the scene realistically. There is a huge exposure difference on the original film negative with the sky being overexposed to the point that detail was washed out and the foreground being heavily underexposed with little detail in the black ash. The colour negative film fortunately had enough exposure latitude that ultimately both shadow and highlight details could be obtained. A print such as this could have been achieved in the traditional darkroom of course, but the messing around with masks to get it right would have been a pain. With the quick selection tool in PS, making and refining a “digital” mask was fairly straight forward. Thank goodness for digital technology!

Fumeroles, Pacaya Volcano, Guatemala.

Website worth visiting: For those interested in beautiful nature photography check this out; http://www.hawaiianatolls.org/photos/NWHI.mov

The link is to a QuickTime movie slideshow and looks at both bird and marine species in the north western Hawaiian Islands. Be warned, it’s a 39 meg download and requires QuickTime player but is worthwhile. KD.