'Side Lit in the Morning'

Taken in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Beautiful shot.

Kenneth, this is the third time I've checked this one out - there is a lot that is good in your image, wonderful color, organic shapes, great texture, good composition. For me all the crisp textural detail seems overshadowed by the soft focus in the upper third; did you try cropping that portion out? Anyway, you have a winner here.

michael

Michael, I didn't consider a crop in this instance as I felt the upper half needed to be included to contrast with the lower half.

thanks for looking & commenting.

So much colour in what are conidered to be drab and boring lichen splats. Even looks like a map of some far away ocean islands, two different kingdoms separated by ocean between. Good eye, even better capture and presentation.

Fantastic scene especially with the side lighting. My only suggestion is to open the aperture to f8 to avoid digital diffraction which raises its ugly head with a bit of softness in the image. If you want more areas to be in focus with f8 then shoot several  images(refocusing at each new image)  as part of focus stacking post processing.