Mt. Teide moonscape

[Jerry van Dijk]

This was taken with my simple point and shoot on mount Teide, the large volcano on Tenerife island, off the west coast of Africa. A very empty and surreal landscape, figuring in several sci-fi movies.
I'm thinking about entering this in a national photography contest, so please don't hold back on your critiques :D. Point of self-criticism: upping the contrast produced some harsh black areas on some of the rocks. I wasn't able to figure out how to save the details in the shadows without losing those wonderful color shades in the gravel.

Canon IXUS II, handheld, 5 mm, ISO 80, F/7.1, 1/500 sec, EC 0, center weighted average metering. PP in Corel Photopaint. Contrast, levels and sharpness. Slight crop from bottom and left for composition. Note that I lost considerable detail in the BG in compressing to meet posting limits.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Jerry, Interesting shot of a rather barren landscape. There is foreground interest and detail in the majority of rocks. A few things to suggest. I would reduce the sky by about a third. If you took a slightly lower angle the merge between the backround rocks and the distant mountains might have been avoided. Based on the shadow lengths it seems to have been taken when the light was high. The image would of had more drama if it was taken with either early or late light.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Jerry,
Very good advice given by Dave. I will add that getting there if possible.....with even lower light and accentuating the rocks even more...will help improve this. If yo have nicer clouds....then by all means include the sky...as presented I agree on the removal of about 1/3.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Thanks for the advice, I will chop off some of the sky. The evening light sure worked wonders on the colors, but we had already moved to another location. Better to not linger around till dark, because of the perilous decent back to the 'real world'. No chance of clouds, we're actually above them here. With 3.7 km height, mount Teide is the third biggest volcano in the world.
Any tips on working on those shadows?

[Ed Vatza]

Agree with the above. As is, it needs some clouds. Otherwise reduce the amount of sky in the image.