Zion Moon

I recently went to Zion to join David and Jen for a Narrows workshop. Alas, the Narrows were not accessible and the workshop was cancelled. So I spent a week hiking and trying to shoot some images to showcase this beautiful national park. I have many that I will post. This is the one that represents the week best. Rather than shoot a lot of subjects, I focused on just a few. And spent serious time on composition. I waited and repositioned for about 40 minutes hoping for this very shoot as the moon moved through the peaks. While the colors were lovely, this screamed for black and white. What do you think of it? More will be coming.

Specific Feedback Requested

I am trying to give a sense of scale. Cropping changes this but I settled on this. I plan to blow it up to 4’ x 4’. I appreciate any critique.

Technical Details

2 Likes

Welcome back, Bill. Fantastic image and scene. Terrific composition and B&W works nicely. Well done.

Thank you David. I am still learning this photography thing. There is nothing I love more.

Your efforts with the composition paid off. To me the black and white treatment gives it an austere look, which I like. One thing that may be my browser’s fault, or perhaps jpg compression, is some banding in the sky.

Thank you for the comments Dean. The banding is not in the actual image. I used a low resolution version to upload.

I like all of the components in this image and the processing but the composition doesn’t work for me. The placement looks artificial somehow. The perfect sphere spaced perfectly in this notch doesn’t work for me. I would suggest a more natural look.

1 Like

Very nice. Bill, what I’d work on before printing large is the sky where there are banding artifacts in the image shown online. If these are also in your copy, blurring them out in Ps or by using a LrC sky mask and sliding texture and sharpness full left might do it.

I keep coming back to this image, Bill, because I’ve been curious what others say before I say anything because I’m no expert! But I really like it! I was relieved that you don’t have the white circles in your original because that was the only thing I wasn’t sure of. I think the moon looks like it’s getting swallowed by a giant creature. And I like that you did it in black and white as it adds to the drama. Really nice capture!