Longs Peak From the Tundra

The high tundra of Rocky Mountain National Park looks like Mars, harsh and rocky. It’s cold, even in July, and high. I can’t walk on the tundra, so the scramble up the fall line is by jumping from rock to rock. It’s exhausting, but the payoff is obvious.

Specific Feedback Requested

Composition, processing.

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Sony a7R iv, 24-105 lens at 59mm, 1/40th sec at f/16, ISO 100

2 Likes

What a gorgeous looking image Matt. It is very crisp and clean, nice job on the processing, the image has a lot of snap and impact. The composition looks very well thought out, and nicely balanced . But it’s the rich, dramatic light in this image that set sit apart for me. Not much more to say, I’m just enjoying this one very much.

Hi Matt. What a place! The sense of scale is fantastic.

In terms of critique, my main comment would be that looking at it totally objectively the sunlit mountain ridge in the background is the obvious subject here. I’m not sure how much the foreground is adding to the picture. My suggestion would be to crop in.

Also, the cloud above the mountain looks to be the brightest part of the picture (certainly once you remove the foregound) and so draws the eye away from the subject (the mountain). I appreciate that in reality the cloud likely was that bright so I totally understand you’ve likely stayed true to the scene.

If going for the crop, I would also suggest boosting the contrast, perhaps by setting a black and white point for the background and playing around with it from there.

My only other observation would by the sky may be a tad overly saturated / too cyan so perhaps pulling down the saturation a touch and tweaking the white balance / adding a little bit of magenta tint may help.

All very subjective though and a great grand landcape scene nonetheless.

Just to demonstrate my suggestions I’ve had a very crude attempt at a crop, adding a little contrast and locally darkening the cloud with a gradient. I’ve also added a little magenta - too much perhaps.

Oh and one more thing to consider. Would you need to stop down as far as f/16 to get this all in focus. I wonder if f/11 would do it, which may save you some sharpness potentially lost through diffraction.

Thanks, Brian. Great comments.

Thanks, Ed. Helpful. Matt