Granite Jigsaw + Comment

Another sweet Sierra image, Dave.  The glow of the crest and it's reflection are beautiful.  The only thing that I can suggest would be to desaturate the smattering of glow on the granite mid frame left.  I love how the fore boulder fits into it's slot.  Nice work.

Another lovely image of the high Sierras, and I do like the jigsaw effect of the rock in the tarn in the lower right. The moon adds another dimension to an already great scene, the light is beautiful, and I like looking under the water. Although the moon and its reflection are very centered, there is enough going on around it that I don't think it matters. Kudos to you for carrying all your heavy equipment up those steep trails to make such gorgeous, artistic images.

Sweet light, Dave. Actually, in my humble opinion, a bluebird sky goes best with an image like this that has so many other interesting elements.
Cheers!

The oranges are pretty saturated but that's how it looks at that time of day. That's why you chose to shoot at this time. The beautiful granite is perfectly rendered with just enough exposure to show it's beauty and still look believably in a shadow. I'll be in the minority and say the moon and it's reflection don't do much for me. The fg rock fits so well in that slot that I would give it greater recognition. I would crop the sky out and crop off to the right of the rock. The lowest dip in the sky would have to be cloned out. IMO that would be a stronger composition.

The moon and reflection look good in this one, maybe because it is centered.
I like how the boulder jugsaws with the reflection.
Colors look realistic to me.
Another nice one.

The near perfect reflections and the late light work their magic here very well, Dave.  The moon is a fine addition as is seeing through the clear water.  This looks great even without colored clouds.

Another high country beauty. I am with Igor about the moon reflection, more of a distraction for me than an enhancement, but we seem to be in the minority. Minor stuff though, really well done. 

Dave - perfect composition here, just the right amount of sky. I vote for including the moon and it's reflection, it's a nice finishing touch. I really like how  you composed this to have the rocks on the left and snowbank along the shore pull your eye into the center of the frame, it provides a nice compositional balance against the jigsaw puzzle rock on the right side. Wonderful job of post-processing here, the exposure is perfectly balanced, and the saturation in the reds is nicely controlled

Jigsaw indeed. Good work on the placement and clarity.  The FG boulder looks too warm in general compared to the surrounding rock, though I do see some hints of orange in the far outcropping.  Maybe cool the color balance to match the surroundings, maybe desat a tad.  Is summer here yet? 

Dave, you captured a beautiful summer Sierra scene here. The blue sky works well here, as it contrasts nicely with the fiery orange granite. I love the placement of the foreground rock.

I like the moon and reflection in the image. I mentioned this on your Twilight's Embrace post, but here too the moon and its reflection don't line up vertically. I pulled a screenshot into PS and aligned them, which also made the image look more like it was "level", but I only noticed that after aligning the moon.

So, my question for all you NPN'ers is this: should the moon (or anything, for that matter), be directly above it's corresponding reflection? My feeling is yes, and that's why I mention it, but am I thinking correctly?

Thanks all for the insightful comments. I plan to keep the reflected moon in this one, although, I did clone it out of my last image "Twilight Embrace".

Craig,
Very keen observation on the moon reflections. I went back to the raw files just to make sure i didn't make any perspective adjustments and this is the way the lens rendered both images. Neither were shot very wide (35mm + 28mm) so there should not be too much distortion. I'm not an optical expert but it may be a natural phenomena based on viewing location. 

The moon and it's reflection do no align perfectly because there is an ever so slight clockwise correction needed around the central axis. Theoretically they should align but there is such a small difference that I didn't notice it and therefore of little importance. But some feel more strongly about it. 

Dave,

This is simply glorious.  Perhaps my favorite of your High Sierra images from this summer. A striking reflection image with such bold symmetry - I just love this.

I would love this without the moon as well.  Lot's of differing thoughts on the moon, but to me I'm indifferent - I think it works included or not.  And since one of the goals of your trip was timing for the full moon - I think you did a great job in maximizing your timing! So the lean goes to the moon - yes.  ;-)

I'm no optics expert, but once Craig mentioned the alignment of the moon and it's reflection I got curious.  Of course it's not just the moon. If you draw lines from various points along the crest left to right, you'll notice that everything in the image isn't aligned vertically. What's interesting is that there's a CW rotation for each point and it's reflection. What i noticed and have no explanation for, is that the rotation increases almost linearly from left to right.  Far left, cw rotation about .5deg, but as you move left to right, the rotation increases to almost 1.5deg.  weird.

To Craig's question, our mind and experience would say yes, the moons should be lined up vertically. however, I didn't notice it and it's not readily apparent to the casual viewer, so not a big deal at all with this image.

Oh, and I didn't even mention the perfect placement of the lone boulder. Perfect, great job. Shows you took great care in crafting this image.

Lon

I should mention that I think the only reason I noticed it in this image is because I noticed it in Dave's Twilight's Embrace image, where it is further off, so I was looking for it specifically. I agree that most observers wouldn't notice it, and it's not really a problem. I'm just curious about this phenomenon.

In the other post, I rotated the image so the moons aligned, and the image looked way off level, so I know that's not the problem there. In this one, rotating to align the moons doesn't look off level, so who knows.

Lon, it's very interesting that the rotation you mention changes from left to right. I didn't even think to look at that, but that is making me wonder even more about the phenomenon.

This is fabulous, Dave.  No nits from me, and I like it with and without the moon.  I do think that losing the moon simplifies the composition, but keeping it helps us identify time of day.  There is a kind of metonymy with the moon and foreground rock that works well also. 

I didn't notice the rotation in this, but I did notice that the moon's reflection is not circular...kind of looks like there was a ripple in the water? I wonder if there is a possibility that having IS on while the camera is on a tripod would create some kind of a shift like this that would account for the double image of the reflected moon and the rotation folks describe. 

ML

Beautiful layers and colors. What I find most striking about this image is how serene and quiet the place looks. The water is absolutely still and the entire place looks so remote and isolated. It must have been awesome to be hiking around those parts.

Your work from the Sierra is drop down gorgeous Dave. I can't want to see what more you have to share with us.

Regards,