Dunes On Fire

[Hank Christensen]

Here is another shot from my Death Valley set. Shot the same day as my "Twilight Dunes" image (but 50 minutes earlier), this shows how light and shadow completely change a mood. Here the shot is all about contrast and warm tones. As I was working my way through the dunes (careful not to walk into any potential compositions and track up the sand), I fell in love with this foreground.

Canon 5D MkII
1/20 sec @ f/16, ISO 100
17-40mm f/4 @ 24mm
Added foreground contrast and darkened the mountains and sky slightly

[Dennis Bishop]

Wow, this is beautiful. Very nicely photographed and processed. The detail, color, and contrast in the foreground are to die for, and I like how the ridges recede into the shadow. It's nice that you brought back the sky a bit because it contrasts nicely with the warmth of the rest of the image.

[Roger Clark]

Hello Hank,
I love this image and the shadows at all levels (looks like about 70 degrees phase angle). I think the image would also work well without the mountains and sky at the top. Very nicely done either way.

Roger

[Robert Amoruso]

Hank,

Nicely executed. Great FG put to maximum impact with the large DOF. I like the mountains in the BG too - very craggy and rough looking - contrasting well with the smooth lines of the dunes.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hank - this is great. It all works - the textures, comp, inclusion of the bit of sky. Well done!

TFS,
Rachel

[Vivaldo Damilano]

Fantastic composition, love the patterns of the sand and also like the mountains in the BG but would have loved to see a little more sky TFS :cheers:

[Morkel Erasmus]

Just eye candy, Hank!! :cheers:
Is there any way to get more detail and deeper blues from the sliver of sky you have?

Love the leading lines...can see this working very well in B&W too...something like this?? WDYT?
(you need to tweak red, yellow and cyan here to get the right play of darks/lights)

Obviously IQ would be better if done from the high-res TIFF or the RAW...:e3

[Hank Christensen]

Thanks for the suggestion, Morkel. I've darkened the sky slightly and brought back a bit of the blue (levels adjustment on just the sky and tweaked the blue channel slightly). I also added a touch of global contrast, adding a little more drama throughout the photo (on further review, I felt the mid-ground was a little too flat). I certainly did some B&W conversions from that day, and I do think this one holds up well for B&W because of the foreground lines, but I got such a screaming red off the dunes I just couldn't bring myself to do it. :-) That is the beauty of digital though - we get to play and play and play....

Vivaldo - my general rule for sky inclusion / exclusion (and this can be generally applied to any landscape element) is "if it doesn't add to the image, cut it out". This helps me to really emphasize what drew me to the subject in the first place. In this case, the sky really wasn't interesting and didn't add to the photo, so I included very little of it. I wanted just a bit to frame the distant mountains and give the dunes a sense of place. The real subject here is the foreground dune pattern, which is why it takes up a full 3/4 of the photo.

Thanks all for the feedback and comments!

[Jay Gould]

Hank, I am with you on the color; I have a lot of trouble taking an image to the dark side. I know I should make the jump and experiment; I am sitting on one Morkel suggested I do in BW.

Your RP takes it up several notches; well done.

[Andrew Aveley]

Bit late to the party here but , phenomenal image and composition. The repost rocks here and colour version is a winner :)

[Morkel Erasmus]

Your repost sure rocks, Hank...just what it needed :5