Cloundland Canyon, Georgia

[Paul Wolf]

HDR image of a Cloundland Canyon State Park in the mountains of Georgia, just southwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It took seven shots and Photomatix to come up with this version.

Canon 1DMkIII
Canon 17-40mm @ 17mm
ISO 200, f/11
From 1/5 sec to 1/80 sec on a tripod

Thanks!

[Michael Pancier]

amazing light. Looks like a must visit

[Jay Gould]

Lovely framing of the valley through the trees and under the branch. I like it a lot!

[Fabs Forns]

I like what you did with the HDR mix, not too lame on the mid-tones, common flaw of many landscape HDRs.
I'd have placed the tree on the right closer ot the frame, it seems on the way to enjoying the beautiful view. Great job!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Paul,
Well you've done something remarkable here.....I usually don't like HDR's and I certainly am not a huge fan of branches and twigs protruding in and out of the frame.......but I find myself really liking this scene! The HDR definitely brought up some details that would have been otherwise lifeless and the way the brances vine comein to and out of the frame is also well done. You have definitely placed me at the overlook....as if I was standing there myself enjoying the wonderful scene. Not an easy task breaking all those rules.....but very nicely done.

[Paul Wolf]

Thank you all for your comments. Roman, I know what you mean. For some reason, the very first time I looked at this, even before the HDR treatment, I liked what I saw. I have other shots that are taken at different angles, between the trees, straight down the valley, etc. And I've even done the HDR thing on those, but for some reason, I keep going back to this one. I tried to guide the viewer by dodging and burning such that your eye would move around the scene, yet still be drawn down the canyon out to the horizon and up to the yellow in the sky. To my eye, this moves you past the "jumble" in the foreground, just as I did when I walked up on the scene. The entire scene is made up of multiple layers, and I believe everything works together to move you through those layers. I don't know; maybe more artistically astute folks can explain why this works.

Thanks, again, everyone.
Paul

[Dave Mills]

Hi Paul, When I first looked at the image I was attracted by the beautiful light with the valley below and not attracted to the busy left side. I like the way the viewer is peering though the opening and seeing the valley below since thats where the interest lies in the image. All I did to the image was crop off some of the top( which takes away an area of little interest IMO) and have the viewer focus more on the valley while still leaving the blocking foliage on the left.....

[Harold Davis]

dramatic light in GA? wow! this is awesome. love what you did with the HDR. worked perfectly here.

[Robert Amoruso]

Paul,

The HDR treatment captured the glow of the valley well. Good work making the colors and tones appear subtle w/o being flat.