Black Hole

Exploring one of the many drainages along Zion's East Side. Thanks for

viewing.

Good to see new work of yours here, Anish. It's lovely, as ever. The black of that pool is quite arresting, and it is perfectly placed to carry the eye through the frame. The exposure there is dead on, too, with just enough detail to give an effect of polished obsidian. Also, the way you have the major lines converging from the bottom left and right corners to the far end of the pool, and then into the ravine beyond is very dynamic. Finally, I like the choice to dial down on the saturation here. That's unusual for red rock desert scenes, especially in the kind of light you were shooting, but I think it serves to accentuate the unreal darkness of that pool.

Just for fun, I tried to make a couple of other compositions out of this, one a square crop the other a traditional, high-saturation landscape. I prefer yours to both of them, but it was neat to look at other possibilities. I hope you don't mind.

Hi John,

Thanks for the comment. I don't mind the variations. I think it's a good exercise to try things like that. Regarding saturation, this drainage was in deep shade by the time I captured this image, so the light was quite cool and the colors subdued. I wanted this to look as natural as possible, so I actually didn't alter the saturation at all from the original. I like your crop as an alternate composition. In my image, though, I felt it was important to include the background peaks to put this pool into the context of the grand Zion landscape. Also, I like the way the flow of the sandstone lines connects the foreground with the background.

 

Anish

Very nice shot, natural colors, beatiful framing. Ciao

Thanks for filling in a bit more of the story, Anish. As I said, I think you made the right calls about color and cropping. In fact, part of the reason I posted my variants was that making them really got me to thinking about why your original works for me.