Red Rock Canyon

[Wendy Kates]

I took this photo at Red Rock Canyon in Colorado, in the late afternoon in March (about 1.5 hours before sunset). It doesn't really follow any of the "rules" of good landscape photos: no rule of thirds to speak of, no leading lines, blah sky...but I like it, especially the repeating colors and tones. Let me know if you think I'm deluding myself. All critiques / suggestions welcome.
Canon 7D Mark II, 70-200 f/4 lens, 1/60s, f/4, ISO 100, tripod, tweaked with Tonal Contrast filter in Color Efex Pro

[Don Railton]

Wendy, If you like it, job done...! the only question I would ask is, could you like it more? I would have shot this with maybe F8 to F10, especially if you used a tripod.. It might have put the lens in a sweeter spot... I would have also composed the image so the big tree LHS was complete.. Its occupying a good part of the image FG so if it deserves that it probably should be complete as well. I think the tones are a bit muted also, a little more mid tone contrast would help for me.. I like the path leading in from the RHS, working as a lead for me..

DON

[Andrew McLachlan]

nicely composed Wendy...I would also like to see a little more contrast in the scene and I am not certain about the color of the sky...a touch too cyan?...perhaps in Selective Color reduce the black in the cyan channel. You did well to only include a sliver of the cloudless sky...good call...not sure if you could have included more of the red sand along the entire bottom edge to give a cleaner bottom edge to frame the golden grasses in the foreground...I do see a diagonal movement in the evergreen trees leading through the valley

[Wendy Kates]

Thanks for this helpful feedback. I am pretty sure the original image had more red sand in the foreground...I cropped it out, but I'll go back to the original and redo it, increasing contrast. Re: the sky: I forgot to say in my post that originally, it was totally washed out, so I added the blue in PS...obviously not as effectively as I thought! Perhaps I just need to crop out more of the original, washed out sky.

[Don Lacy]

HI Wendy, Some nice replays already I would ad that form the fact the image is all one tone with now bright areas for my eye to travel to or settle on and no shadow areas to ad depth to the image it appears one dimensional and flat.