Wildflowers, Pacific Crest Trail, CA

While in Northern CA a month ago I got
this image while hiking a brief portion
of the Pacific Crest Trail. In order
to darken the bright yellow area at the
top of the pix, I darkened it a bit. I
tried cropping but didn't like the result.
I appreciate your comments/critiques.

Canon 5D MarkII
Tamron 28-300 Zoom Lens
Bogen Tripod

The bottom seems more uninteresting to me. See what you think cropping it to square, keeping all of the top part. Great shot, though!

Robert, this is pretty nice. I like the color of the flowers and the nice variety you've captured.

I do have a couple of suggestions:

Burn down the yellow area at top and then burn down the background behind the furthest lupines. This will put better focus on the flowers.

Crop from the bottom to eliminate the two white flowers (asters?) in the foreground. Or, you could clone them out.

You could also, very selectively, burn down the right hand corn lily, as well.

Nicely done!

--P

Your constant hunt for wildflowers seems to have really paid off big time again, Robert. I find the image to be very pleasing as is, but also find the crop and burn ideas excellent thoughts as well. I would crop slightly top and bottom. Top to just above the right hand tall stalk which I feel helps eliminate just a small bit of the center bright spot at the top. Then burn the remaining bright area down at that point. The slight crop at the bottom I would take to just above the left small white flower. I think that all might be worth experimenting with for another look see. Scrolling up & down sure makes it easy to see those effects take hold with no really extra work at all.

Thank you for the suggestions. In light of them, I've cropped from the bottom,
cloned the bright spot at the top, and burned (darkened) the Corn Lilies. If
you have time, I would appreciate your feedback on the changes.

Great work on the repost it really holds my eyes in the scene compared to the first version.