Desert Flowers

What a beautiful one!  Love it.  Best regards,

A beautiful shot, which can be improved.  Understanding that opinions are based upon personal taste, so they may or not be what you are looking for.   Personally love "Red Rock Country" and the subtle background which puts the plant in perspective.  However growing up before and during the age of direct positives, my personal taste tends to like strong colors and contrast more.  So feel that the plant with flowers would be enhanced by capturing it, and adjusting contrast for more POP...  That would separate it a bit more from the rest of the image, making for a stronger composition or impact.

Many who have grown up during the age of automatic metering on all camera's, tend to have images that all have the "same" contrast or look and are missing zone 0 or even 1 and zone 10, which make a world of difference.  If not familiar with the zones, you can do a search on the Internet.  There is free instruction about using the zone system with digital cameras.

When shooting landscapes using film, have always used a polarizing filter and even sometimes added a UV filter with heavy haze. (Especially in the Grand Canyon)  It really brings out the Red Rock Country images and cuts through the haze.  With the advent of digital and Photoshop post processing, many feel filters are no longer needed.  But, many are missing better images,  by not using filters to get the best image possible _before_ post processing.  This results in a better image after processing.

Robert,

The sad fact is that I was using a polarizing filter and I did enhance the purple flowers in PS. Maybe others could have done better (I'm sure that they could) but that's all that I could do. However, - I think that it could be a monitor issue. My original submission was done from my desktop where the monitor showed vivid flowers. Now I'm looking at the image on my laptop and I agree with your critque.

Marvin