Colorado Sunset

[Jared Gricoskie]

I spent the weekend at a dude ranch on the Colorado Wyoming border near the Medicine Bows. The sunsets are breath taking, and I think I captured this one moment pretty well.

D300, 24-85 f2.8 @ f22 56mm, 1/10, ISO 400, 2x GND, slight crop, and minor saturation boost, tripod

[Leroy Laverman]

Nice job with the sky. The colors are fantastic, especially the orange reflection on the top most clouds. I'm wishing for more on the bottom edge though. The thin black horizon might need to be increased to really anchor the image. Either that or some other strong FG object/shape to pull you in.

[Robert Amoruso]

Jared,

Very dramatic looking sunset. I see where Leroy is coming from with his comment on the bottom FG. But I feel that the border may be the problem, I go from the image to the white border then black border. The transition is jarringly to the eye. I suggest losing the border and seeing how the bottom anchors the image then.

When Roman sees this he will be glad to see the GND filter in the techs. Nice work.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Jared,
I am leaning towards Robert's assesment on the border.......although when I look at that border.......adding canvas where you have the bottom edge of the frame....may also work as Leroy suggested. Now for the Grad ND.....While I'm sure it did in fact help a bit.............it works best when there is a prominant FG feature you want to include.......thus evening out the tonality of the FG and BG. Since you had a silhouette at the base and the sky was from the lightest to darkest.......did you turn the grad ND upside down??? (light side at the top, which would have been the preferred choice)........or did you leave the darkest density at the top in the reds??? Let us know!
Now for the image assesment.....besides the above possible improvements to try...I like it! Simple but very pleasing to look at!

[Jared Gricoskie]

Thanks for the comments, the GND was upside down on this. Needed to use it as I was losing the details in the very top cloud patterns.

On the border, it very much may be the case. I usually don't post my shots here with a border, but use them on my web gallery and didn't have the extra time for a forum version and net version, and I can definately agree the border does inpact the shot. I think as a print, plaque mounted, with just a black border it would be fine.