The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic + Technical
About This Image
Aerial view of the ancient sand dunes in Namib-Naukluft National Park. The dunes are believed to be some of the oldest in the world, dating back at least 55 million years, shaped by wind and erosion over millions of years.
Feedback Requested
Any feedback welcome
Technical Details
6/23/2026 ; Sony a7r v; 24-70 24mm f2.8; 1/400; ISO 125
It seems to me that there is already quite a bit of contrast in this image but I can try using contrast specifically and see what happens. I didn’t clean up the dunes which I might need to do with more contrast.
Alice
Alice, the sunlit dune faces stand out nicely. While some additional contrast would let the dimes show a bit more, Igor’s version also has notably more saturation, so I’d suggest more contrast but less saturation. I am intrigued by the lighting, the dune shadows are significantly darker than the surrounding land, so I’m guessing that the sun was not high enough to hit the lower areas.
The new version is more striking. I like it more. But there are many other options to play with. There is no ‘right’ was. If you like this more than go with it. You could make the shadows more sea blue and play with that. Or you could take most of the color out except for the sunlight parts of the dunes. Did you go on the Adam Gibbs workshop there?
Wow, how striking. I love the composition of your original. It feels more graceful, with curvy dunes placed more diagonally in landscape orientation. I’m with Igor on the contrast. If you look at the histogram for your original, there’s not much (if anything) towards the right-hand side (lights; see where the red line ends - nothing to the right). Most of the pixels are bunched together.
I like the overall darkness, though, so I thought that moving some pixels towards the lights end would give this a bit more pop. Here’s the histogram after I did that, and moving the darks darker, too. That spreads out the histogram while still keeping the overall darkness of the background.
Here’s the result. I also desaturated the oranges just a bit as it felt overdone after the edits. It may have been that orange in reality, though, so maybe didn’t need to do that. This is similar to Igor’s edit, but with a bit more color. At any rate, this is a very cool photo!
Nice pictures - and the high contrast make a nice abstract.
I prefer Igor’s crop as I believe the end of the right-most dune is important compositionally for my eye anyway.
From a 6ft plus viewing distance it makes a lovely abstract
Enjoy further manipulations and be sure to print and frame your preferred final version
Hi Huw, In looking at my revision, I agree with you, I got a little to tight on the crop. I can fix that. Not sure how I feel about less color in the dunes, I will try backing off a little, but in reality, they were very orange.
Hi Bonnie, thank you for the reedit and the feedback, I really appreciate it.. I’m guilty of shooting to far left on the histogram. The dunes were very orange with the morning light and high shadows so I will probably keep them a bit more saturated.
I will continue to play with this image!!
