First light @ Painted Hills

I really loved this tree on my walk up to the overview/vista at the Painted hills. 1st light the next morning and some work in PS CS3 gave me these results.

Comments appreciated.

20D & 17-40f4L
1/30th sec at f/16.0

It's an awesome shot, love the light and the shape of that tree. Down at the bottom, on the lower right of the dead tree, it feels a little foggy to me, maybe just the scene but looks like it got dodged too much. Other than that, outstanding.

Good eye, Andy. I did dodge there a bit more (maybe too much) to lessen my shadow that just popped up.... I can fix that, thanks for pointing it out.

This is very nice, John. I love your use of the available lines here. My only small nits being the tree's central position and the branches occupying too much of the frame.

I dig it, John. I never thought that tree would work like this in a comp, but you did it.

To someone who didn't know of the Painted Hills this would be a real, 'oh, jeez, Wow' shot. Even still, think of that tree as a focal point was good original thinking.

I'd echo Trevor's suggestion - a bit more landscape around the tree would help establish the "struggle to survive" context. The morning light is very nice, indeed!

Tom

John, I love the light and the color you captured here as well as the different veiwpoint of the hills. About the tree... I like the comp better if it's cropped from the top to a square. That seems to me to off-center the tree because of where my eye goes to the darkest trunk. Personally, I would've lliked to see A similar comp without the tree. Visualizing it that way is delicious. OTOH, this is a great Western states depiction of definitely dead desert tree that gives a lonesome feeling and an appreciation of the harsh environment.

It's really orange on my monitor. I assume that's the morning light hitting it. I like the unique color you got. I like the smoothness of the painted hill behine the courseness of the craggy old tree. Nice work John.

I do wish the camera were panned a bit left. My eye get's pulled out of the frame because I want to see more of the hill.

John,
Very original in my book. I like it too.

John,
I'm gonna go against the grain here. I've shot this tree before, but didn't like it. I think yours is better, but it still doesn't grab me enough to say I like it a whole lot. To me, its a bit too busy and smallish/thin to take center stage. It does have enough interest to make it a right side portion of the frame if you could balance it out with the back hill.

While I love this shot, truthfully, it's a bit of a so-so shot to me, but I wanted some honest opinions. I got them so I thank each of you for your thoughts and comments !! I have a wider/taller original RAW file that this came from so I could create a different perspective, but the separation from hills was not what I hoped for.....

Thanks again - I think this is the first time I've gotten 10 comments in the PNW forums !