White sands

Too many Yucca plants? Distracting clouds? Too much grain/noise?

Oversaturated? Any other comments, critiques and suggestions?

PDE

It's all subjective, of course, but I think the elements of blue sky, a moon, yucca plants, and patterns in the sand are quite nice.  The clouds on the horizon hardly catch my eye.  The grain/noise in the sky does, and I think a smoother, more uniform sky would be preferred and would be a nice counter to the pattern in the sand.  What seems to catch my eye the most are the "lumps" in the sand, especially in the lower left.  These seem to add a lot more complexity to the photo and break up what I would want to see in the simplicity of the sand patterns (remember, this is just my subjective take on the photo).  I'd also suggest angling the camera down a bit so that there is less sky above the moon and correspondingly more sand (as long as you can maintain the DOF).  Compositionally, I think that slightly revised angle would work a bit better.

Thank you Stephen for your comments. I'll think about angling down the camera. It will probably mean a different orientation or wider perspective if I want to leave space around the moon... I will have to try it out.. Thanks for your reminder.

Indraneel, I agree completely about needing space around the moon.  In fact, in my original comment I was going to add "as long as you don't get the moon too close to the top edge."  Again, it's all subjective, but I think (I'd know for sure by comparing several possibilities) you have just a bit more room at the top than is necessary.  I'm guessing that removing about 3-4 moon diameters from the top and adding that much more at the bottom would be good.

On the other hand, some reviewers might complain that would put the horizon line too close to the center, and they may have a point.  I don't offer this as a strong suggestion  -- only something to think about and to perhaps try and then compare.

Yes Stephen, I'll do and see (possibly something similar now that I'm many moons away). Logic needs data to chew on.

removed noise from the sky. lightroom seems to be mangling the color and causing oversaturation and noise if I use it to convert 16bit adobe tiff to jpeg (with no additional sharpening).