Surprisingly, not another waterfall.

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Sandstone formation and approaching storm, Petrified Forest National Park, May 1999. Minolta X-570, MD 24-50mm @ 50mm, f/5.6, 1/4 sec., Kodak E100VS. I was going to post yet another waterfall in a seemingly endless series of my waterfall photos, but I had a change of heart. :)

http://members.aol.com/torgophile/photo.html.

-- Christian Deichert (torgophile@aol.com), May 08, 2000

Answers

A simple yet elegant composition, I like the way the perfectly centered, flat horizon leads my eye directly to the formation. The colors work well together, although I wonder if another 1/2 a stop would have been beneficial.

Nice job!

-- Jim Erhardt (editor@naturephotographers.net), May 09, 2000.


I like it, but I wonder too whether 1/2 stop more exposure would have given it more impact.

-- Robin Smith (rsmith@springer-ny.com), May 10, 2000.

Nice shot. I wonder though if you could lighten it and then increase contrast? Hopefully that would keep the sky dark and foreboding, but bring the landscape up closer to its actual value, (or what I perceive to be its actual value, I haven't been to the Petrified Forest in a couple of years). Also what do you think of tilting the camera up a bit to eliminate most of the foreground in front of the rock formation and include more of the dark sky? Just a couple of ideas, but really its quite nice the way it is.

-- Billy Gorum (Herphoto@aol.com), May 11, 2000.

Thanks everyone for the responses so far. This scan may be darker than the actual slide; unfortunately since I'm in the process of moving out of my school apartment, my computer and I are in one place and my slides, loupe and lightbox are in another so I can't check to see whether this is the case. Of course, since I remember the sandstone in the middle being closer to white, it may have thrown the center-weighted averaging meter off. Either way, it's darker than the original scene, so your comments are on the money.

Billy -- I have another shot of this scene taken as a vertical with around 70% of the frame being sky and the rest sandstone; unfortunately I don't have it handy to scan (as above). If I remember it next week I'll scan it and see if that works better.

-- Christian Deichert (torgophile@aol.com), May 11, 2000.


50k limit Christian! What would Chris Rustage say?

-- Charles Eustace (carloz1@usa.net), June 20, 2000.


The freakish landscape and almost black sky make this visually interesting. I wonder what effect a higher or lower horizon would have on the composition - the horizon seems to blend into the rock formation a little too much.

Overall, though, a very interesting photo.

-- Jeremy Pursley (jpursle@doce.ufl.edu), June 20, 2000.


Come on...50k, 54k, I figured it was close enough. Had I tried to resize it, it'd be at most half as sharp as it is right now. As for Chris, he's a nice guy, I think he'll let this one slide, right, Chris?

-- Christian Deichert (torgophile@aol.com), June 20, 2000.

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