A Mono Lake area photo not showing the lake.
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Larry, it’s very refreshing to see an image from Mono that’s primarily about the tufas, and leaves the lake out of the image. I like this different spin on an iconic location. I like the mood you have achieved in this image, the colors in the landscape nicely complement the rosy glow in the sky. I love the crescent moon too. If you got all of this out of one exposure, then kudos to you, you have a nice balance in the sky/land dynamic range.
In terms of composition, I like the idea of having the moon near the leftmost tufa, but I wish both of these elements were more to the left in the composition, they feel a bit too centered in the image for my personal taste. Perhaps a slight crop from the left could bring them more off-center, and you would not lose much of the rosy glow in the sky either. In terms of image cleanup, I would burn down or clone away the bright tufa in the LRC, it is a bit of an eye magnet.
But overall this is a very pleasing image, and a fresh take on a familiar place. Well done 
Thank you for taking the time to comment.
This is from 2009 from a Rebel XT processing a JPEG in lightroom. The sky is a bit noisy and any attempts to de noise made the foreground elements soft. I hope to go back to Mono Lake some day it really is a special place for landscape photographers.
Larry,
Kudos for turning around… 
The tufa and landscape surround Mono is just as special - although so darn inviting to get the tufa out on the lake too! Indeed a special place.
I like the crescent moon combined with the color’s of the earth’s shadow. You did well to hold some detail in the tufa and foreground, given the light and time of day.
Of course I wasn’t there, but know the sun had set to the right of the tufa and I find the large mass of the formation kind of “blocking” - not sure how else to explain. Compositionally, I would like to have seen the tufa formation on the left being lit by the last bits of light from the west, with the crescent moon in the UR in a rough rule of thirds position. As presented, perhaps a bit of a crop off the left. The moon is kinda of in an awkard position; not quite centered left-right. So perhaps a crop would be better balanced. But that’s just one person’s thoughts.
I haven’t actually been down to the South Tufa in quite a few years - Too many dang people!
Thanks for sharing.
Lon
Wow Larry, you really nailed the exposure on this one for a jpeg with a rebel. I agree with Ed as I think a slight crop from the left could help the composition a bit by removing some of the empty sky. If you have photoshop you can probably clean up a bit more of the noise in just the sky. There are many ways to do this but the one I currently use is by making a layer with the Adobe Camera Raw filter and cranking the luminance up high and then creating a mask and painting it in on just the sky to keep the detail in the foreground.
