Looking North

Description: Early morning at the Kanku Breakaways.

I may have wished for the distant mesas to be higher than the horizon.

Specific Feedback Requested: Is there enough interest on the left-hand side of the image? Unbalanced?

Pertinent technical details or techniques: 1/250 f7.1 ISO320 70-200@100mm Hand Held.

Is this a composite? (focus stacks or exposure blends are not considered composites) Yes. Sky added. The sky was at the same location, but earlier than the rest of the image.

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1 Like

Glenys, this is a striking image but I’m having a tough time figuring exactly how I feel about it. Judging by the lack of other responses, I wonder if others feel the same. Yeah, your’e right that it is unfortunate the mesa’s are the same height as the horizon, but it is what it is. What I can’t figure out is whether I like the minimal processing or would rather see it developed in an more extravagant manner. I really like the concept of the image, but still up in the air about the final outcome.

Thank you so much for the reply Bill. I thought I had been a little too “extravagant” in the processing. What would you have in mind? Maybe not worth the while to pursue any further.

Glennie, I like the way you processed this image and the soft colors look very nice to me. As you and Bill both mentioned it would be nice if the distant mesas rose above the horizon line, but even still I’m quite enjoying this image and the feel it has.

I have trouble faulting the “flat” horizon – meaning the marge of the mesa tops with the distant horizon – because you would have to be much closer to them and down in the valley to see that. I can read it as illustrating the vastness of the landscape.

I think the lovely soft tonalities and matching soft colors work very well, and I would never have thought the sky was added. You made an excellent choice for it, with the soft mauves picking up the colors of the landscape.

I’m not sure about the LL corner – my eye wants to enter on the stronger lines in the LR but then I jump from the top of the near hill to the similarcolors in the LL. I wonder about toning down the colors there a bit? (Or maybe I just had too much coffee…)

It might have been an interesting composition to shoot from well to your right, to place the near hilltop in the left third of the frame, but maybe not possible to position yourself over there.

It’s an awesome landscape out there, in any case!

I often feel this way. I’ll take an image to a certain point and feel like I’ve overdone it. I think a lot of folks like more “pop” in an image. For me, I love this kind of understated look (it doesn’t appear extravagant at all!). I wouldn’t have guessed that the sky was replaced.

It’s a lovely scene. Perhaps just some local luminosity adjustments would make it feel more balanced. That bright triangle in the LRC is really catching my eye, but it doesn’t look like it should have so much importance in the frame. And the strong red soil in the LLC is quite prominent and almost stops me from entering the frame. I took a crack at some local adjustments with the idea of better directing the viewer’s eye through the frame. See what you think.

Adjustments:
LRC - Lowered lights, warmed and added magenta tint to make it blend in better.
LLC - Desaturated reddish outcrops a bit.
Background - Increased clarity a bit, lowered shadows, raised lights, to make it more consistent with look of light outcrop in foreground. Although it is background, it felt to me like there was a disconnect between the foreground and background “look”.
Cropped a bit off the right for better balance. It felt like the proportion of background to foreground was not enough (the whitish outcrop took up too much of the frame).

All that being said, it’s a lovely photo. I’m really enjoying seeing your world!

Glenys, another great “desert pastels” study. You have already gotten a lot of good comments. To me the lower level of contrast and color in this (and the other shot) is a matter of personal choice and taste. Some folks prefer higher contrast and saturation, and some prefer a more delicate color pallette. My advice would be to take a few of these, process them like you have here, and then process them more aggressively for contrast and saturation without worrying about whether you have “gone too far”. Step away from them for a week or two, and then come back and compare them side by side with a fresh set of eyes. I often think that is a good exercise to do.

The horizon is what it is, not ideal. Here is another outside the box idea to consider, one that gets rid of the horizon issue, but leaves this as an interesting study in shapes and color (albeit at the expense of not communicating vastness as much as the original).

I figured out what I was feeling about it. It seemed to lack overall contrast to me. That IS NOT a criticism nor a critique, just a subjective feeling I had. I did play with it and will post below. Again, I’m noy saying this is better than yours, just different.

Original

Revision

Bonnie, thank you! This is brilliant. Diane had the same idea about the LLC and that bright corner and it’s worked very well.

Bill, thank you for playing with this image. I like the contrast.

This is certainly a beautiful place and the atmospheric conditions really worked well for you. I like the sky and I like the shadows that cross the lay of the land. In some ways this scene reminds me of our Monument Valley as it has both drama and a sense of peace at the same time. There are some composition issues, however. The light triangle in the lower right corner I regard as a compositional issue. In fact that whole slope in front of the hill kind of intrudes into the image. Someone mentioned that you could have made a stronger image by moving to the right. It’s hard to say. Yes moving the hill away from the right frame seems like a good idea but what about what’s in front of it. What probably would have worked would be to climb that hill and use some of those red rocks as a foreground for the distant views. Use foreground to take this to another level. I don’t see any crop that makes this comp stronger. Although I think darkening the white triangle would help.

Thank you Igor. The image was taken on a “road trip”. I had read all I could on the site and we camped nearby in a disused opal mine just so we could be there before the sun rose. As the sun started shedding light, we were completely awestruck at the beauty that surrounded us. So many vistas to photograph and not enough time before the sun rose too high. If only we had a couple more days here I think I may have come up with a better composition. Getting to know a place and its nuances is half the battle. Having a decent foreground would certainly work better.