Cracked Rimrock

I keep going back to this one spot on my infrequent visits to Colorado National Monument. It's a short walk and I usually have it to myself, particularly on a freezing winter morning. When I visited last weekend, it was -5 at the Fruita entrance and +12 just a few miles up the road on the rim. I used a D800 with 14-24 lens for the image and chose a vertical comp to accentuate the split in rimrock, zooming in to almost 24mm until Independence Rock looked straight. I love winter photography!

Comments appreciated.

Is that a plumber's crack I see Cool spot and shot, though, kind of reminds me of the Toroweap Overlook in the Grand Canyon.

This is an uncharacteristic image that stands out in a great way from anything I've seen from CNM (and I've looked at a lot of photos from there recently ). Love the strong foreground rock fracture. Well done! A reminder that I should visit there more frequently too!

The snow along the crack looks great and adds to the leading line. The left side of far rocks seems to show some lens distortion. Looks cold; brrr.

Thanks folks. Every time I go to CNM I realize there's an unvelievable amount of diversity to be photographed - maybe that's why I just go back to the same places. I think some future trips will focus on the valley floor and smaller details... and wildlife. I saw a short eared owl for the second straight time on this trip.

I like the light and balance of tones as well as the color. Both of the top outside edges seem to have some lens distortion.

Morris and Doug, The image was made at 20mm @ f14 and there is some distortion. I'd like to get the most of good galss and I try to avoid shooting super-wide with vertical subjects, unless I'm after a surreal aspen forest... Perhaps you could add your thoughts about distortion with wide angle lenses. Thanks.

Dave, I tried fixing/improving with the lens correction with pin/barrel distortion adjustments to no avail. What might help a little would be to adjust the top portion with positive vertical perspective and then blending the foreground rock back in (or doing vertical perspective on the entire image), but you would lose some image to a recrop.
A TS lens perhaps? From what I read, the Nikon 14-24 is pretty good with distortion from 18-24mm

Cool prespective, Dave! I love this time of year as well. Im pretty sure theres a small CW tilt here (based on the stratus in back) but if you used a level then im imagining things

Thanks again - It's level and I'm just getting to know this lens. I like the image, but probably won't go to great lengths to make it better. I'll be going back again, and again