f/8, 1/320 s, 100 ISO, 200mm (135mm on crop sensor)
What technical feedback would you like if any?
Any
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Any
This is a great location to shoot with back-lighting. The Joshua trees go into silhouette, and the back-light creates some nice highlights in the ground cover. I think your handling of color, exposure and contrast looks great, your processing has done a good job drawing out the warm hazy feeling that had to have been here at sunset. I am a bit bothered by the clipped Joshua Tree on the right edge, as @Lon_Overacker often says, “make crops of stuff at frame edges look like a deliberate choice”. In this case, I’d like to either see more of the Joshua Tree (making it a true framing element), or less of it (clone it away). The way this is presented ends up making the cut-off Joshua Tree a distraction. I’d suggest cropping or cloning this away, it won’t really change the overall composition or story very much.
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Gaurav,
Well, @Ed_McGuirk stole my thunder… thanks for mentioning Ed! So yes, the partial joshua tree on the right is a little problematic. But I think you’ve done great handling the dynamic range, the extreme brightness up top combined with the nicely back lit elements in the foreground. I think a crop that includes eliminating the cut off tree will work quite nicely.
I noticed that it’s a little soft in that foreground as well. Not sure if f/8 was enough depth, where the focus point was or if this was on a tripod. But having those highlighted, back lit elements sharper would be nice.
What I also think works really well is the depiction of the desert - the HOT sun, beating down on the desert; the hot-hazy warm light actually works well to tell that story.
Lon
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Gaurav,
I like the basic premise for this image and it tells a nice story with the high key sky and back lit Joshua trees. @Ed_McGuirk and @Lon_Overacker have already mentioned some great ideas for improvement. My suggestion would be a bit of a radical crop to get rid of the intruding Joshua trees on the right and left sides and the OOF FG. Just a suggestion of course.
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I agree with all the points made here. @Ed_Lowe, thank you for your suggestion. It sings better than the original, I appreciate you taking the time to make it. I’ve done some similar cropping on the original image, very slightly improved the dynamic range, and I like the new image much better.