Pre-Dawn at the Totems

[Mike Landwehr]

This is a pre-dawn shot of the Totems, in Arches National Park, from the back (west) side of the formation. It is, obviously, an HDR, created with Photomatix, using the fusion method with five images. Thoughts?

1D Mark IV
24-105 f/4 @ 58 mm
ISO 400
1/80th, 1/40th, 1/20th, 1/10th and 1/5th sec at f/16
Tripod

[Diane Miller]

Very nice to be there that early! I like the composition but the distant mountains are too light relative to the sky (which is gorgeous), and the FG has a lot of magenta. I'm seeing some sort of dark halo around the central totem.

About 95% of the time I get a better result than HDR by taking the middle exposure and using the tonal adjustment power of recent versions of LR/ACR.

[Don Lacy]

Lovely dawn colors in the sky and I like the comp. i would like to see just a tad more contrast in the midtones to help eliminate that HDR look and I would darken the towers they should not be brighter then the sky and would look at the magenta color cast , Overall a fine image just a few tweaks

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Mike, lovely comp and beautiful color in the sky. I do agree that the totems need to be darker and also an increase in the mid-tone contrast so that the scene is not quite so flat looking. I would also evict the tiny bit of rock on the right edge of the frame that is hovering above the ground.