Arches National Park

[dankearl]

Taken this past November.
Nikon D3000
iso200
f11
18mm
Manuel exposure
1/15
Camera held on fence post.
Pattern metering

http://i1021.photobucket.com/albums/af332/dkearl/0461arches-1.jpg

[Richard Lovison]

Hi Dan,

It's a beautiful scene you chose to photograph... it provided a challenge due to the many stops of light. I hope someday to visit that part of the country.

There are a few tweaks I would recommend that could make for a stronger composition. Consider cropping the top slightly to just above the group of dense clouds on the right hand side, burning in the upper left hand corner to even out the sky color and density (looks like you may have used a polarizer), bringing up the shadows a bit and recovering some of the detail in the blown-out highlights in the clouds. The main group of clouds sits very near a power position in the composition and unfortunately, that's your weakest part of the image.

I hope this helps you.

Richard

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Dan,
Richard offered some great advice on both the crop and comp......having been there many times myself, I know the difficulty you encounter there! I do have a few questions for you.....do you shoot RAW or jpeg? In your original histogram.....where any of the whites blown? I ask this last one as they appear blown but that can also be introduced in PP'ing.
This image is a classic example of when a Graduated split ND.....would work wonders.....as would an HDR if you are into such things. Both of those would help even out the tonal range of the scene.....giving you a greater latitude to tweak the image. Just some things to keep in mind and I look forward to your answers so I can go even more in depth.

[dankearl]

Thanks for responding, Roman and Richard,
This was shot in jpeg.
I am pretty new at this, this was taken with the D3000 and I have since upgraded to the D7000 and I am now shooting RAW.
The clouds were blown out, but I thought the light and the photo was good enough to keep.
My pp skills are still pretty limited, I was using NX2 for processing jpegs, I am now processing Raw photos with Viewnx and tweaking them if I have to in NX2.
I have not gotten into pp very much as I have been just trying to take decent shots!
I do use a grad filter and I did use it on some shots in Arches.
This one I didn't and to be honest I think it was shot with no filter at all. It was taken with my 18-105 lens which is sort of my P&S hiking or biking lens.
I use filters mostly when I use my 10-24 lens and a tripod. As I mentioned this was taken with the use of a fencepost!

[Dave Mills]

Hi Dan, Agree with most of what has been said above.
Cropped as a pano(reducing the sky) would add strength to the image and allow the viewer to more appreciate the vastness of the plains. As stated more detail in the clouds and the foreground terrain would also help with the use of a grad or applying HDR.

[Robert Amoruso]

Dan,

Even if you are not into HDR right now, instances like this created multiple bracketed exposures that you could possibly use later when you are. In this instance, a would recommend five exposures making sure the first and last place shadows and highlights at a mid-tone position on the histogram.