Rainbows and Badlands

[Dvir Barkay]

149835

Just returned from a beautiful trip to Mexico and will post some stuff soon (will be back there in the rainy season in the summer with camera traps for a project I am doing with the big cats of the Yucatan moist forest ecoregion). I also had my trusty old photography work laptop die, so finally spent some good money on a new desktop and a new beautiful screen (Asus PA279Q) and data color calibrator. Some of the images that I had previously worked on looked a bit different on the new monitor than they did on the laptop (for obvious reasons) so I decided to rework any that I felt didn't look the right way. Here is one from Petrified Forest in Arizona, back from 2012 when I first started shooting (other images that i posted before from the American west are from the same trip, it was a good one).

Sony A100, Sony 16-50/2.8, F/8. Jpeg, 2012, Petrified Forest NP Arizona USA

[Don Railton]

Hi Dvir,

Nicely exposed and it has plenty of detail but I think the rainbow is a little too far away and without a good lead to it to be a strong subject I feel.. Maybe a little off the bottom (maybe up to that path LLC) and a little off the top would help. That cut off cloud should be removed I feel ( or ideally, completely included) as it leads me out of image as it is. Good to see you back.

DON

[Diane Miller]

A pleasing and strong image. The rainbow works OK for me as a sort of grace note.

I think I'd experiment with a gradient burn to make the bottom a little darker. I wonder if it's possible to get a little more separation between the dark hills and the sky, maybe by lightening the blues?

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice scene here Dvir.
I agree with Diane on trying to make the FG a tad darker for better "unison" in the exposure/contrast of land and sky?

Eager to see the results of your camera-trap project (as an aside)...

[Dvir Barkay]

Thank you all for the replies.

@Don, I see what you mean about a leading line, the image doesn't have loads of mpx (10.1) and was already slightly cropped and is a jpeg, so while it is sharp and all, I am not sure if such a large crop would work. I see what you mean about the cloud, and could remove it.

@Diane, I agree that it is rather bright, it does show the scene naturally as the sun was setting and illuminated the foreground, while the clouds blocked off some of the light on the distant hills. So I could lower the exposure a bit as you said, though the contrast was in the original scene so I believe that it should be kept.

@Morkel, I agree that I can slightly lower the exposure of the bottom like I told Diane. I am excited about doing my first ever real project, still learning the whole camera trap thing, but hopefully will get the hang of it, and make it work.