Red Rock Mountain near Grand Canyon

[Hazel Grant]

On the road to the Western Entrance to the Grand Canyon, we passed this rock formation, near sunset.

Nikon D40x, 1/200, F5.6, 22 mm. iso 400
Slight saturation of the sky and lifting of the midtones on the mtn. Hand held.
I considered cropping the bottom dark area, but when I did, it seemed to lessen the majesty of the rocks.

[Dave Mills]

Hazel, I like your basic composition. I also like the sky which has strong interest. I also tried cropping a bit more black off the bottom(not all) and feel it doesn't matter that much. To my eye it works well as a base. I would take out the tree branches on the left and on my monitor the image appears a bit soft. I don't know how much of a crop you made (if any) on this but I do see noise...

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Hazel,
Compositionally I like this a lot. I really has the fell of the red rock area.....and yes.....it does get red like that especially at sunset. In the re-post....i tried to tame some of the highlights (may be because you raised the mid tones on the whole image?) with shadow highlights.....it was quick and did the job.....but you may want to use curves. I also desaturated the reds a bit.....I have been there many times and they felt a little too dominant. Cleaned up the "blotch" in the sky/clouds and did remove the tree tips. I cropped a bit off the bottom and ran the whole image through noise ninja.....as there seemed to be quite a bit of noise.
Let me know your thoughts.

[Hazel Grant]

Thanks for the help. I did use curves to lighten the midtones but just on the mtn itself. I had selected the sky, deleted it, and then worked only on the land with curves. (I did forget to eliminate the branches before I posted.) For the sky, I just did a little saturation increase. I can clearly (no pun intended) see the difference in the sharpness between mine and the repost, so I have to study the noise factor as my next area of learning. Is there something in Photoshop that I could use for that? I just ordered CS4 and should have it next week.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Hello Hazel!

I guess your main problem here was your selection of f number (5.6) I guess going to f/16 or even f/22 would help you. Very nice compo and sat colors.

Cheers.

[Paul Marcellini]

Great scene, Roman's edit is a big improvement. Can't see doing much else to it but addressing the sharpness. Could be your processing for web or in the original. I also think the deep shadows add some nice drama to it.

[Michael Pancier]

great clouds. always a plus when out there. I like Roman's crop as well vis a vis the shadows on the bottom....

[Hazel Grant]

Thanks for everyones input. I still have a lot to learn re f stops and iso. Thanks for helping me. Looking forward to sharper stuff in the future.

[Robert Amoruso]

Hazel,

Best bet here would be using a tripod, going to a slower shutter speed and closing down the f/stop to f/11 or f/16.

You composed this well - just watch your edges for things like that branch poking in. A small move on location can correct this w/o resorting to image manipulation later.

This may help out on the sharpening.

JPGS

Go to http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5598 and about 1/2 way down in Artie's first post in the thread look for "Free Excerpt: Creating an Action for your BPN J-PEGS" in red. Try this procedure for your postings. I find his JPG sharpening to be a bit too aggressive and use the older ones from his Digital Basics which are Unsharp Mask Filter on BG copy at: ROund one 175/0.3/0, Round two at 125/0.2/0, Round three at 125/0.2/0. Since you are sharpening the whole image, if you get halos you may need to selectively sharpen.

[Hazel Grant]

will check this out and continue learning....thanks.