Desert Jewel

Thanks for comment and suggestions.

Enjoy life.

-m.ozgur

Great Shot.  Make me want to jump in on a hot summers day...

Mehmet, you are probably enjoying HDR experimentation. There are more and more images presented in HDR. I have to say, it confuses me. Photographs are not suppose to look like this. Although the place is truly beautiful and I like the composition, I think you should back off on the HDR a bit. I am sorry to be critical of you effort here.

Thanks Herma.

Now I understand why the reception to this image so poor. People has seen so many bad HDRs now, they look all images with great suspicion.

I guess most of the people thought this was an HDR image and rated as such.

I'm sorry to say that this was NOT a software HDR image in the way you think.  There is nothing to back off.

I'm curious, would you consider use of ND grads "acceptable" HDR photography, but "software HDR"  not acceptable?

It seems that there is inconsistency in landscape photoraphers views on acceptable specific techniques that end up yielding the same result. One is cheered as a masterful techique, the other one is sneered down as a cheap trick.. go figure...

An excellent capture.  Personally, I do not care how a final result is acquired, but the quality of such results.  The challenges you faced in this image are enormous; harsh sunlight, reflected sunlight, and deep shade.  You captured all in one image with great skill.  IMHO - I do not believe enough is gained though to the image with the overexposed (ghost-like) rift tops and nude sky to warrant their inclusion, it is quite bright, distracting the eye away from you subject.  Personally, I would remove as much sky as possible, yet still keep character to the location.  I am including an example of my post cropping thought (3:2 format), however, I will gladly remove if you object to its inclusion here.  As stated this is just my opinion and will just as likely be dismissed by others.  Thank you for sharing this lovely photo, it seems a location I would enjoy seeing for myself one day.

-Dave

what an inviting place - the composition is very nice. The photo is a little washed out on top thought from the sun. Still I enjoyed it

I agree that the sky require a bit more work, and I'll work on that in the next iteration.

However, cropping out the sky completely is a bit too extreme. not only that is easy way out, but also the most common approach. In the final version of this piece, I do intent to keep the sky, and maintain the same aspect ratio.

So what confuses me is the bright rocks on the right, that are clearly in the shadow, yet the rocks on the left are in the sun but darker. Also, the small trees right of the water, are so lifted out of the shadows that it appears they are lit by giant studio lights. And that would be impossible. Would you be willing to post the original image?

Isn't what you get when you use ND grad? (bright areas a lot darker and dark areas a lot brighter?)

BTW, your reasoning without knowing to real geology and topology of the canyon is also overreaching. The cliff face on the right is relatively bright because it gets major reflection from the cliff on the back. You can think of as very large reflector on my back.

I may have burned the trees on the left bottom a bit, sorry to disappoint, this is pretty much the way it was captured,