High Altitude Oasis

Photo taken of my 12 and 8 year old boys backpacking in the Eastern

Sierra's, California. Shot taken at Mono Pass, 12,575 feet of

elevation. The small cloud was the only one in the sky - is this a

distraction in the photo? All comments, good and bad, welcome. I am

obviously a beginner.

I think the cloud actually helps. I backpack and photograph in the High Sierra often, and as beautiful as that typical deep blue cloudless sky is, it doesn't make for very interesting daytime photographs.

 

This looks like it was taken about high noon. The light is harsh, and it has given the photo a flat look, but topping out at a pass is usually going to happen around midday, so there isn't much that can be done about the light. Did you get any nice shots in the morning or evening?

 

Other than that, I might suggest cropping off the sides to create a vertical composition, focusing on the hikers, lake and cloud. That ofcourse, would be at your artistic discretion.

 

You can see some of my Sierra shots in my folder.

 

-Anish

I have to agree. I think a portrait aspect to the picture, cropping out the hills on the side would elevate this to an excellent shot. Particularly with that cloud and the small lake.

 

One other thing though. May I suggest scaling your images down a bit smaller before posting so that you do not use so much disk space on photo.net and bandwidth usage is reduced and people without broadband can still view the image large. Just a suggestion but I like your photo.

There is obviously a blue color cast throughout the picture. Check the white balance temperature or maybe your post processing of the sky affected the overall colorcast.

Thank you all for the comments and ratings. I learned some stuff!