Artists Light

And here we have the Painted hills from a rather standard vantage point taken quite a while ago. I've never been really thrilled with the comp - maybe a little right-weighted, but what a dramatic sunset!

Wow, that is an amazing sky. Perhaps you could do a more pano crop?

Nice! I think the composition works granted the circumstances. The bold sky warrants the degree of focus that it got in this shot. I think the foreground is sufficiently displayed to grant a sense of depth, and adding any more foreground may offset one's focus on the dramatic sky.

Also, Marc, I very much enjoyed reading through your updated smugmugbio. I could not agree with you more on the statements you made regarding the need for the wilderness experience in present day society's format of cheap thrills. " It’s not about where you are, but how you see it." True, we hold the abilitiy to dictate the experience we receive from any surroundings. Your passion for the outdoors is always an inspiration.

You could crop out a quarter of the foreground and I think it would work nicely. Dang nice, Marc.

You know, Mark, I took about 100 images during this most impressive light. Every single one of them except 2 did not include the foreground you see here, but were otherwise a very similar comp. I'll post one if you like. Every one of them failed compositonally IMO. I was really bummed about the outing, because I knew I had a once-in-a-longtime sky, but couldn't overcome the compositional shortcomings of this perspective. The images all lacked a lot of depth. Forcing the eye strait into the valley below. Once I realized I had taken these couple rouge shots from back a little further, it all came together finally. That first curve in the foreground just made it work for me for some reason. I wish I knew exactly why. To make matters worse, the background lighting was distracting earlier. I found, that nothing really worked until most of the light was gone from the ridge behind the hills, leaving the emphasis on them.

Have to agree with Mark, a pano crop should work well.

I can see how the foreground "frames" the shot and I can see how cropping it out would put the horizon almost in the middle of the photo. I don't know though, the ridges on the left and right sort of point to the hills, which is good. It does seem a little top heavy with my crop...hmmm. Interesting.

I think the key compositional detrement here is not the addition of foreground so much as it is the lack of light on the left side. It really bugs me in the first image. It disappeared right after that background light faded out, so I could never quite get it right.

Here's a pano crop from this image off top and bottom.

Beautiful image, Marc. I like the full frame view that you first posted - to my eye, the focal point in this image is the light pink/salmon clouds with the medium blue spot in the center of the upper left quarter of the image, just above the ridgeline. From there, I like how the light tan colors lead through the gap in the Painted Hills in the mid-ground, and up the ravine to the patch of grass in the lower right quarter. It really pulls you right into the image, and the grass gives a nice scale to an otherwise surreal landscape. Very nice!

Tom

Incredible sky. It seems like there is such a competition between the very colorful hills and the very colorful sky, it's hard to tell what is the star. It is really nice to take it all in though.

I think the panorama works a little better for me - it lost the darker foreground in the bottom and you really "swim"around the critical areas of the frame. Amazing sky, Marc.....

This is an amazing take on the landscape, Marc. I love your original composition, where the foreground serves as a nice lead in to the scene. The pano crop is missing that element and therefore seems incomplete in some sense.

My suggestion is to brighten up the foreground a tad bit. Doing so will place more emphasis on it and that way it will feel more of an integral part of the composition. I hope this makes sense.

Regards.

Hi Marc, unlike most shots of the Painted Hills where they are the focal point of interest, they sky to me is what is far more beautiful and dominant in this particular capture. I think in the crop/pano version you've cut out the best part of the shot. Personally I'd prefer to seen more sky and less Painted Hills because it's so striking. You can always capture nice shots of the hills but to witness such an amazing sky is very rare.