This image was taken a couple of weeks ago on my Utah fall colors trip. I was up around 9500 feet when a storm came in and threw down a ton of pencil eraser sized hail for about 15 minutes. It was enough to damage my brand new vehicle’s paint and windshield. The storm appeared almost out of nowhere and was gone almost as quickly. This image was taken about an hour before hand when there was still good late afternoon light hitting the buttes and the mountain in background. There was only marginal light hitting the foreground aspen but there were enough yellow/orange aspen that it didn’t really matter.
Specific Feedback Requested
Any and all feedback is very welcome.
Technical Details
Z9, ISO 200, f/8, 1/160 second, hand held, 100-400mm lens @ 190mm, manual exposure
I like both of these quite a lot. Interesting that these are identical in concept to your previous Badlands image. I’m wondering, did these scenes and moments just work out that way, or were you seeking out the near/far juxstaposition between foreground aspend groves and background, distant mountain features? No matter, I think the approach works really well.
In the first, are those the Flat Irons? Sure a different angle than I’m used to seeing (I spent my early youth in Boulder.) I like the juxstaposition here between the to major landscape elements. I think you did well with the balance of luminosity from the two different lighting conditions. Well seen and presented.
I love the dusk’s earth’s shadow colors in the second. Given the time of day/evening, the light on the aspens seems about right. My only nit with this one is the yellow tree tops at the bottom. Not sure if there’s room to crop them out without making the result too tight at the bottom. Not a huge issue, but I think an instance where I either want to see more… or less/none at the bottom.
Lovely autumn landscapes from your trip David.
Lon
I’m torn between the two. What they both have in common is that the light is happening in the top, distant section and the aspens and color below become the supporting, anchoring element. Totally get these were the conditions - too bad there wasn’t some streak of golden light hitting the aspens. I guess one can day dream.
I prefer the first image because of how the mountain and sky have been achieved. I also like the almost silhouette line that runs across in front of those mountains. So, it’s the background that makes one image better than the other. I would crop the second image to the top of the green layer of trees in the second image. That would make it more of a panorama and result in a 50/50 composition. I think the processing is just about perfect for a natural image, particularly the first one.
I like both as well, but the first one is my favorite. It has a more formal composition structure to it and as @Igor_Doncov said, the background compliments the foreground nicely. The second image has more impact, I think due to more saturation in the trees, but it feels a bit more sparsely populated if you know what I mean.
The first one would make an awesome print in my view.
What a difference a day makes - first one for me too - clarity, clouds and colour, separation of FG from BG, all make this first one suitable for a wall print.
Thanks for your comments @Lon_Overacker, @Igor_Doncov, @David_Bostock, @Mike_Friel.
I only included the second image to show how dramatically different the same scene can appear with different lighting conditions and I wanted to show what the larger scene looked like even with all of the bare patches. I should have said that in my introduction. I much prefer the original one posted with the light on the buttes. It seems that is the consensus with you all so far as well.
Lon, It was just sheer happenstance that these scenes popped up in front of me on this trip. They were both simply car pull outs along the side of the road and probably less than 20 minutes apart so no, I wasn’t seeking them out. It just happened that way. I knew very little of the area I was shooting on this trip so it was more of a scouting trip for me where I happened to find a few good spots to shoot. I have a few images where a streak of light is hitting the aspens but it’s not on the far buttes. I never had both.
Igor, I like the idea of a pano for the second image. It also needs some processing work as I did very little to it. It was just a comparison shot to share but now that you mention a pano, Hmmmmm?
David and Mike, Yep, the first one it is for m too. Thank for your thoughts.
