Great Sand Dunes NP is one of my favorite places on the planet and one thing I particularly enjoy is extracting scenes with my long lens. Caught this group of hikers getting an early start up the dunes after some rain overnight with cloudy predawn light.
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Sony A77II
Sony 70-400 G-II 2 400mm
ISO 200, 1/80 @ f8
Bill, this is a wonderfully composed image. Really fantastic balance and flow throughout. I was surprised to read it was from Great Sand Dune, though it makes perfect sense now that I look closer! My immediate thought was something like the Icelandic highlands - which is saying something, since most dune images look like… dune images! The people add a wonderful sense of scale and the path ahead of them leads us through the image.
I really have no substantial critique here. You could experiment with slightly more saturation overall, though the subdued colors are also a perfectly valid choice for such a desolate landscape. You could try dodging up some of the spotlighting a bit and darkening the rest of the image slightly, but since this was a cloudy scene, it wouldn’t make sense for it to be too strong. You could try dimming that white area behind the people a little, but it also works to have it brighter to highlight their presence, and it’s certainly a nice spot for brightness to be in the frame. Getting super nitpicky, there’s a little white spot near the lower-right edge of the frame that could be darkened.
Those are just things I would play around with if it was mine, but it is really great as presented as well.
Eye-catching image Bill; I’m really enjoying this one! It’s a gorgeous abstract until the eye recognizes the people, and then it flips to a wonderful “big view.” I would love this image without the people, but they really do take it to a new level. The trick it plays on your mind comparing with and without them is fascinating.
Wow, this is an amazing image. Your compositioncolor , treatment and tonality management is just perfect.,
