Steens with Sunflowers

Here is another from my Steens Mt. trip. This one is also from the Alvord Desert side of the ridge. Most of the flowers were long past prime, but I was able to find this little patch for the foreground.

This is a Photomatix HDR of two images. The HDR was necessity not by the dynamic range so much as the depth of field, so it's more of a focus-stacking experiment using Photomatix new selection tool

Any thoughts? Flowers too messy? Would you look at this more than once or twice? Tell me the truth

Hi, Marylynne. I like this a lot. I think the foreground is on the messy side, so that the image might be improved by cropping from the bottom to a more panoramic look. OTOH, as is it looks perfectly natural. Sure, I'd enjoy looking at this over and over, maybe not as a big print but as a smaller one to add interest to a niche or as a card. Perhaps OR Tourism would like to see/use it? I think there's lots of possibilities for this image.
The sky is interesting, the light is fine and the flowers are a cheerful note against the desert surroundings. Glad you posted it. Will look forward to what others' opinions are, too.

Hi Marylynne, I like the sky and the mountain background a lot, not sure about the flowers. I would like to see what it would look like by moving past the flowers and lowering the point of view to use the sage as the forground. This looks like a good area for a visit.

Hi Marylynne! I really like this image. Its such a beautiful setting and the image is very well composed and exposed. The main bloom adds a lot to the image. It took me a couple of views to realize what part of the image was causing me trouble. Its the small piece of wood in the bottom left corner. IMO if you cropped just a very small amount off the bottom to remove the piece of wood, it would also strengthen the bottom right. This is a very small nit because I really like it as is. I would not crop any of the sky, especially from the right. The curves and lines in the clouds are very nice, as are the mountains.

Thanks, everyone. I liked the scene, especially the sky and the flower adding drama to the mountain, but it was never a perfect situation. I did do a few without the flower, but that scene lacked good light, even though the cloud was still nifty. Here is a narrower, pano crop. Better?

Oh YES! Nice!

Interesting mix of elements; comes together nicely! I like the crop for sure, although I'd leave just a tad more to give the leaves a little room.

Thanks, John and Catherine. I like this better too.