White sands

Very well seen and composed. Well done.

Nice patterns in the sand, and the vegetation is perfectly placed.  If I were to suggest anything, it might be to try to eliminate that very small piece of distant landscape on the left (probably best done by stepping to the left, thereby swinging the camera to the right to maintain your composition).

I don't see this as lopsided at all. You have balanced out the mass of sand with great shadows and grasses in the diagonal corner of the frame and the heavier blues of the sky.  I'm not working with the best of screens (traveling again) but the shadows look just fine here.  I don't think I'd have noticed the bit of landscape if it hadn't been mentioned but now that I do I too think it would be better cloned out.

Beautiful work. ~ Dora

Thanks Raymond, Stephen and Dora for your kind words and critique. I actually retained the token horizon for a number of reasons (but will try cloning it out to see how that looks): Depth perception, interrupting the dune edge from leading the eye outside the frame, merging the sky with the ground, sense of horizontal, balance the dark sky at top right, balance dark shadow of grass at bottom right... and how to put it ... ground one in reality that what I see is a perfect glimse that exists in the real world which exists just outside the frame and one will never manage to completely be lost in daydreams, although it is fine to do so... (I guess that didn't come out right).

It's simpler to clone and see what happens, I'll do that.

Indraneel, those are all very good reasons to so exactly what you did.  I think the important thing is that you thought about it and you had a reason for the composition you chose.  Too often when I have a sliver of land like this, it got there simply because I didn't see it in the viewfinder (even with a 100% viewfinder) and therefore didn't think about the pros and the cons.  You're one or two steps ahead of me.

Thanks Stephen for the kind words. Actually I was looking at this through an FM2 but then decided to shoot in color to keep my options open.. the 50mm on the fm2 probably did not translate correctly to the 35mm on the D200. I remember the sun was popping in and out of clouds and the contrast was low, even though the colors were wilder than what I show here. I was actually aiming for the slight undulation in the dune on the top right and my friend was sceptical it would register. He seems to have been right, but I did back it up with all the grass.

nice photo!