Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.
Questions to guide your feedback
Which iteration do you prefer? Why? Are you comfortable alone in such an alien environment?
Other Information
Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.
Image Description
South Coyote Buttes covers the southernmost 3.5 miles of the Coyote Buttes ridge, approximately as far north as Top Rock Spring, and extending east to incorporate a wide area around Cottonwood Cove and Cottonwood Spring, this latter is where most of the photogenic formations are found. The ridge itself, uniformly colored deep red, contains a few hidden arches and other jagged formations, but this region is very-little explored and in many places the slopes are too steep to traverse.
Over an approximately circular area, half a mile across, the thin-layered, cross-bedded Navajo sandstone bedrock is eroded into a great array of cones, hoodoos, fins, ridges and ravines, along the east rim of the wide, sandy valley extending north from Cottonwood Cove, the far side of which slopes up much more steeply to the Coyote Buttes ridge. The rocks exhibit a great range of colors, due to oxidized iron compounds-mostly reds, pinks, yellows and oranges, and the individual strata vary in hardness, resulting in amazingly varied erosional patterns. Occasional rainwater pools add to the beauty of the scenery.
Technical Details
Canon EOS 5D IV, EF 16-35mm @ 17mm, f/8 @ 1/200 sec, +0.33 EV, ISO 400; RRS BH 55; remote trigger
Specific Feedback
Monochrome vs color? Anything missing or should be eliminated to make this a better photo?
Cool formation! I like both the color and B&W, but with a slight preference for the color because the B&W is somehow a bit too contrasty for me, especially the upper part of the rock formation. Meanwhile I like the softer feel of the warm-cool contrast in the color version.
As for feeling comfortable in such an “alien” environment? I live for these environments! The more remote the better! The more days without people, the better! I’ve spent lots of time in the red rock desert over many decades so it doesn’t feel alien to me at all, feels like a deep relaxing sigh, like coming home. Thanks for posting!
Thank you @Cathy_Proenza for your comments. I have spent decades wandering around the West, more so in the Southwest. I have close friends who live throughout the region so I have plenty of reasons to visit the area. I too find the color version more attractive because the sky is more distinct from the rocks. I specifically was in the region early last January to capture red rocks and snow. I included the B&W version because some individuals prefer that presentation for literally everything and I want all to be able to make direct comparisons.
oh I am quite comfortable in such places and visit them often. I am drawn to the black and white due to the drama… but maybe a little too much. It suffers from losing the fact that it is snow on the ground and not bright red rock. A solution that I personally would try is to blend a bit of that B&W luminosity back into the colored version, would move the drama into the colored one but the color would tip off the viewer that snow is there. If you need a hint how to do this, ask
Hi Bob,
Both lovely images, but my preference is the B&W because it subtly enhances both the detail in the sky and background vegetation.
Kind regards,
Nigel
Thank you @bill_theis , @Nigel_Downes for your kind comments and suggestions for improvement. I have reprocessed the color version, incorporating a Luminosity bump to the RGB image. I trust that will address your criticism. I stopped at this level of enhancement as I found it became too blocked.
I’ve not read the other comments yet, but I’m not sold on the composition. This area is so magical. There are so many fantastical forms in South Coyote Buttes. Unfortunately, the central placement of the subject just doesn’t seem to have quite as much dynamism as I think it could have. You might want to try a square crop and see if this helps add a little more of that dynamism. You might also want to brighten the sky a little to make it look a little more natural. I think if you work with this, you will find just the right way to display it and celebrate that special area.
Thank you @Erik_Stensland for your critical assessment. This is not the only image I made of this formation but it gave me the best separation of the two towers and view of the pond with it’s reflection. The sky is natural. It was cold and the density of the clouds did not allow much sunlight penetration.
What Bill Theis modifications did by blending the B&W luminosity with the color version looks better to me than my efforts. I have asked him how he did it.
I made two layers in photoshop. the bottom was the colored one, the top was the black one version. I then changed the top layer blending to luminosity and then adjusted the opacity to taste. I think I used 25% or so of the b&w version’s luminosity combined with the colored one
thank you @bill_theis . That is exactly what I thought you did. I did that also and, as you suggested, my version is a bit different with regards to saturation.
![RRF_230104_0265|690x460]
I prefer the color version with one caveat: the sky. The b&w version has too much going on visually and is busy. The sky in the color version needs more blue color, needs to be lighter, and less dramatic. The rock formation has plenty of drama and the sky robs it of its preeminence.
