Attempted recovery (with repost)

This was *not* the best-exposed shot I've ever taken, and unfortunately, I only took the one, with no bracketing. The cliff in the background was pretty much blown out; this is as close as I could come to re-integrating it with the rest of the shot after a lot of work with assorted contrast-reducing and highlight recovery techniques.

I'm also mixed about bulls-eying the main subject, yet the image still has a strong pull for me.

I'd love to have some critiques...

I like the composition. Other than that... you might add a little saturation in the foreground, to balance the color better with the mid-ground rocks, and maybe darken the bottom left corner with a gradient blending upwards diagonally to keep the eye from wandering out of the frame at the bottom left. Other than that, a decent save!.

Interesting thought about the diagonal gradient, Nat. I want the image to pull you *in* from the bottom left, not out to it. That particular stretch of rock is very colorless and bleached-out; I could probably up the saturation a bit and see what I get.

I originally took this as a "site survey" shot, after severely miscalculating light availability at sunrise on Zion Plateau (that's the east side of the park...) I'll probably go back and plant my tripod in the holes I made for this shot if it doesn't get too many negative composition reviews.

I like it. IMHO, it's not only ok to make the tree 'bullseyed', its appropriate in this case. In fact, i would make it even more so by cropping out the bottom third of the 'upslope' diaganols, to balance it exactly with the 'downslope' ones above.

Sometimes the only place to put the subject is in the middle - you've got enough going on with texture and flow in the rocks to make the image interesting with better light. You'll nail it when you go back.

Yeah, bull's-eye is fine on this one, especially since you have so many dynamic compositional forces moving through the image foreground on the way to the tree. Very interesting zig-zag patterns. I'd second Nat's comment about adding saturation.

Todd captured my thoughts exactly. The tree doesn't really 'feel' centered with all the strong, intersecting lines. I like the perspective a lot.

Taking Nat's suggestion and improvising a bit...

Color re-balance on the FG rock (sections of it were blue, which it wasn't in real life...), plus some saturation. Digital NGrad ~30% Linear Burn diagonally across the FG rock.

Ditto other's comments above. Is there a slight blue cast, or is it my monitor. Try adding more red&yellow saturation to the rocks?

Ken