The Inside

It was the darkest part of the canyon. This is my interpretation of

it. This photo captures the feeling I had, standing there.

Nice shot Marc.  I like the sense of darkness you captured here and how this darkness contrasts with the light on the water and canyon walls.  Is that a shadow at the very bottom of the frame or just the rapids in the water?

Marc,

I love the top part of this image- that part truly captures the deep, dark canyon sensation that is paradoxically lit with areas of glowing light.  I'm not as psyched about the blue water- it seems like it would be more white in real life, even though I know film and digital see colors the eye cannot.  I just wonder how this would look with the blues toned down just a bit, or left to the darker margins of the water flow rather than the heart of the white water.  Just an observation...

-Mike

One of the things I really like about your PN portfolio, Marc, is the way you keep revisiting a compositional idea, seemingly in order to find new ways of realizing it. This one—deep blue shadows and a wide expanse of soft diagonal lines, converging to a bright orange vsual anchor—was almost the same set of visual elements you offered in an earlier work: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=10122076.

In both cases, I think it's been quite effective. I'm not sure whether I prefer the muted light of the canyon walls here or the brilliance of the refracted sunlight in the other. Probably both, depending on my mood.

Too, I'm trying to imagine this composition (here or "Light from Within") as a painting. It would be something quite new in that medium: colors that were unknown to the Hudson School, for all their mastery of light and color.

I believe color contrasts can add much to a scene.  The image would be much more flat without the blues here IMO.   That said, they could be a tad too strong.

blue naturally is a complimentary color of orange, this is amazing!!!

I almost expect hobbits to appear in this image on the way to Mordor.  Lovely image and vision. 

This is more addressing Michael Anderson's comment and my disappointment with it than the picture itself; Michael, just like many of us, has learnt a lot from Mark and copied his work in many ways, I don't find his comment appropriate in this case.

PS Mark, I find your recent pictures as beautiful and inspiring as ever.

I love the contrast in textures as well as colors. Cyan in water dramatically sets off the slot - I expect lava to burst through any second. A shot quite different of these canyons. Composition wise I might have tilted up showing 2/3 crevice to 1/3 stream. The square dark areas at bottom edge are a bit distracting.