Just exploring Moab with a need to stop the care here. The light and curve of the the river drew me in.
Any welcome
Is this a composite: No
177mm f/11 1/30 sec iso 400 (not sure how that happened, auto?)
Mario, nice work. The colors and shadow/highlights work quite well. I love the zigzag feel of the lines in the image, which pulls the eye into the depth. Well done.
Lovely scene with very nice colors. I think the shadows and highlights are well handled. I love the reflection of the cliff in the dark water.
(Looks familiar… I should dig through the archives.)
Beautiful image. Fabulous composition…well done!
Mario, the zig-zag composition is very strong. The sandbar in the LLC pointing to the sunlit vegetation adds so much to this composition. I like how you processed the light here to re-inforce the zig zag visual flow. and I think you nailed the level of shadow detail in your processing too.
My nitpick minor tweaks would be burn down the sunlit area on the right edge (1/3 of the way from the top), and the small sunlit section in the URC where the butte exits the frame. But those are minor nits, overall this a very strong image, great work here.
Thank you @Diane_Miller @Tony_Siciliano @David_Bostock @Ed_McGuirk for you comments. Ed I made those few tweaks below in rework.
There is a lot to love about all the subjects within this composition. I really like the play of light on the fall color on the river banks, and those wonderful reflections with the blues, yellows, and warm tones of the sandstone. If this was mine, I would soften the contrast a bit so the sunlit cliff in the background doesn’t compete as much with the rest of the composition. If I cover that area with my hand the rest of the composition calms down. That area with light is very important to the composition but I feel a bit less contrast between the sunlit and the shadow areas along that left side would soften the contrast and give more of a calm feeling overall.
Beautiful composition Mario. The reflected light from the sky on the water as well as the reflected light from the left cliff face really pops the water in this scene and creates great balance with the sky. The composition is really strong with the visual weight on the bottom left (the sandbar poking into the water) almost mirroring the mountain top on the top right. The fall colors are close to being at peak and add a visual feast to the midground portion of this image.
Oh, and good to hear from you @Ben_Horne !
Cool stuff Mario. I can see why the car needed to stop here. The vantage point you selected exploited the near and far edges of the river nicely.
I played with this and found that I wanted less bright blue sky and less impact from the left hand cliffs. Then I realized I enjoyed the colorful trees, and tried to bring out the color of the other yellow trees in the scene – on the near sand bar, on the right slope (nicely in the sunny spots), and on the top of the very far mesa on the left. The result was more an image about yellow vegetation in a grand place, and less about the grandness of the place.
Thanks for stopping there!
Dick, thanks for the rework. i like the decrease in brightness of the left cliffs and diminishing the sky. I do prefer the the original crop however.
Ben, thank you for the comments. I agree with you and Dick (below) about the brightness of the cliffs.
