Horseshoe Bend near Page, AZ

I imagine thousands of people have stood in this spot, and I've viewed

hundreds of photos of this famous landmark. The light was pretty

amazing that morning (a half hour before sunrise) and I definitely

captured the emotional quality of the scene before me. Does anyone

else share my enthusiasm for this version of such a much-photographed

spot?

I do. 6/6

Morning light is amazing, and a very short window of time. By nature of the beast, most of us sleep through it:) I'm glad God made this place, cause it looks like a government project with cost overruns. The Horseshoe runs in my Cheryl Ladd catagory, it can never be photographed enough. Nice work George.

Morning light has infused an ethereal beauty.

I like very much the work and I try to rate with 7/7 but dont works.

 

Yours,

Monica.

George, A beautifull capture! I can hear the stillness..composition with the close greens gives depth.

Great capture. Bravo

Magnifica imagen, bello encuadre, perfecta luz y color, con una excelente composicion, saludos cordiales George.

I think this would benefit from a little PP.

I think the edit shared is a bit too much, but that is in the right direction. You could also level your horizon while you're at it. But it is very flat the way it's presented in 3D depth. Either that our you didn't convert to sRGB before posting.

 

Just loaded into Photoshop and it looks great assigned to Adobe RGB (still could use a little contrast-enhancement and curves). So I think you forgot to "Convert to Profile" before posting....

I did consider "boosting" the color, which would certainly have made for a more dramatic image, but I preferred to keep the color to more what I remember the light being at the time. I have no desire to produce an image different than what I saw, even at the advantage of producing a more compelling photo.

 

I did correct the horizon in other versions, but decided to submit an image to photo.net which had the absolute minimal "manipulation" done to it. I am very sensitive about images that stray from the original, and opted to err on the side of conservatism. I'm still new to digital photography, and am unsure where the acceptable boundaries of manipulation are. I will try some of the suggestions to "improve" the image, but not to the point that I am not comfortable with the image as portraying what I actually experienced.

 

Thanks to everyone for their feedback.

When I load the image into Photoshop CS, I get the following message:

 

"The document 'CRW_6783.CRW'has an embedded color profile that does not match the current RGB working space. The embedded profile will be used instead of the working space.

 

Embedded: Adobe RGB (1998)

 

Working: sRGB IEC61966-2.1"

 

The resulting image that loads is quite a bit flatter than the scene I recall. Any idea on what settings I have set wrong?

What John said. In Photoshop, "Edit> Convert to Profile> sRGB" to convert the image from your working space of AdobeRGB to the color space suitable for web viewing. And in my view, tilting an image to correct a camera misalignment is not cheating. A bit of color (in this case, saturation) adjustment would be OK too, in my book. Remember, if an image had to represent the actual scene as closely as possible, there could be no such thing as black and white photography!

Well, it looks washed out, horizon is not straight, and so on and so forth.. I have seen some amazing shots from same viewpoint this is not the one.

With Vladimer that is.

I have seen several shots of the same image that exceed this one in many respects. Great memory for the photographer, but I do not understand the level that this photo has achieved in the critique forum. Can anyone explain this to me?

Thanks to everyone for their comments, both positive and negative. I have re-worked the image to correct the horizon [due to camera misalignment] and deepen the color saturation a bit. I'd appreciate any comments on the new image.

When I first saw the image I thought it must have been taken on a dreary grey cloudy day - the new image looks a lot more like before dawn (though in retrospect I can see it in the original too). I wasn't there, so can't say which is truer to reality, but I get a better sense of the pre-dawn light in the second image, and the rotation works better for me too. Very nice image. I wonder how it would look with a slightly wider angle of view, e.g. stitching a few images together to get the full circle of bluffs, and a bit more foreground perhaps. Just thinking, perhaps to add something more to an oft-photographed scene, but the composition is really nice as is.

I, too, would have wished for a wider scene, but having purchased a 12-24mm lens specifically for this trip (with the 10D that's a 19mm effect at widest zoom), that was as much as I could get with one image. I plan to go back after I purchase a 5D, and try this one over again!

Hi George! Maybe it is just my personal taste, but I much perfer your original shot. It captures the purity and natural light of the time that photoshop can not do. I think if you were to make this image brighter it would change the emotion in the dimmer color and just create a new scene. However viewed or changed, this photo is beautiful and I hope to visit this place someday. All the best!

 

Hillary

I think the reason this image has gotten the exposure it has is because it's natural. It isn't pumped up with colors that nature could never create (I'm guilty of this crime) and has an honesty about it that is sorely missing in 'online' nature photography these days. What George has shown us is that photographs don't have to be perfect. They can be crooked, the colors can be natural and we can still enjoy it. Only photographers worry about stuff as trivial as crooked horizon lines. Its a simple way for us to find something to say. God knows I've done it. Show a crooked image to 100 people on the street and almost none will tell you it's crooked. If the image is compelling they will say they like it.

 

The photographer showed us what its like to be in that spot and feel what nature presented. Yeah, I've seen this same shot 100 times. If I were there I'd shoot it also. This is one of the few I've seen that makes me feel like I am there, wiping the sleep out of my eyes and marveling at what nature has given us...

 

Thanks George.

 

Dave

Thanks for expressing what I felt at the time! When I see this image, it takes me back to the experience of that scene. I recall feeling the grit of the sandstone beneath my feet, the smells in the air, the sound of distant coyotes I never saw, and the swish of the swallows diving for insects along the precipice wall. I haven't taken many photographs which allow me to relive my emotional experience of the scene over again, and that's what bonds me with this image.