This image was taken last year on December 30 just after a mild winter snowstorm. I was heading to Bryce Canyon for a couple of days and decided to pull off to Zion for a few hours and caught this image right off the road. I loved the foreground brush framing and warming a relatively cold scene.
Snow sure doesn’t last long in Zion. On my way home a couple of days later I stopped by again and the snow was completely gone. Fleeting for sure.
Specific Feedback Requested
There are a lot of elements that could certainly be considered distracting. Let me know if you would make any changes or remove any branches, etc. Also, is the white balance working for you. It was significantly warmer out of the camera and I cooled it down.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Z7
f/13
ISO 80
70 mm
70-200 mm lens
1/5 sec
I quite like this, David. Your composition has nicely tamed chaos, with all the various elements and it comes together well. I like the slightly high key look. No nits here. Very well done.
Really beautiful colors. It must have been really warm if this is the cooled down version. I could see cropping a bit off the left to make the top of the main tree fill the frame (getting rid of that light, open area in the ULC).
That tree has some nice character to it, I can see what attracted you to it. The white balance works fine for me, it’s warm but not too warm. In shade, using auto white balance can produce some crazy results, but your processing here brings it back to warm but natural looking, and aesthetically pleasing.
Yes this is busy, but as others have said a lot of the pieces fit together reasonablely well. But for me personally there are are a lot of busy elements right along the bottom frame edge, and they are pretty bright. This is subjective, but the other thing that I wish was different is the way there is a gap with no tree leaves in the ULC, I wish the leaves extended across the entire frame. Here is a rework with a crop to address these two concerns, and some burning of the brighter tones of what remains at the bottom edge.
Love the gorgeous pastel colours and the organised chaos of this wee scene. Actually the one thing that jars very slightly and may be worth muting a tad is that red rock. I think it almost grabs to much attention.
David,
This is a little busy, but the elements are spaced out beautifully in this desert landscape. The tree has a ton of character and I am enjoying the color palette here so the WB works just fine IMO. My only suggestions were taken care of with the tweaks in @Ed_McGuirk 's rework. Beautifully done.
Thank you to @Harley_Goldman , @Ronald_Murphy , @Bonnie_Lampley , @Michael_Lowe , @John_Williams , @Ed_McGuirk , @Ian_Cameron , @Ed_Lowe for your comments, critiques, and suggestions. Ed, I really appreciate the rework you did to this. I was a little worried about the bright snow spots along the bottom edge of the frame and the crop took care of that as well as the opening in the ULC. I agree with the red rock standing out and in fact, I toned that down already but maybe not enough. I appreciate the feedback on that.
After all is said and done, the chaos in this scene is appropriate for the location and after seeing the improvements that Ed made to it, I am pretty happy with it. As always, thanks for the help with this one everyone! I really appreciate it.
