Clearing Mt Cook

I expect a rough time over the heavy black triangle of the shadow

side of the near slope. Personally I find the visual echo and

dynamic contrast very compelling. The clearing clouds were the icing

on a very lovely cake. Please view the image large.

I'm sure you're aware how lucky you were to even see this majestic peak at all! Great shot too! The rule of thirds illustrated well. The darkness puts the emphisis squarely on the mountain. Wish there was a climbers silhoette on the foreground ridge - can't have everything though. A fine shot indeed! Would love to climb this thing someday.

Great job capturing the contrast in this image. Having the clouds in the shot make it even better.

I agree that the dead space of foreground shadow is the biggest flaw. I do like the rugged edges and wispy clouds.

The crispness of the texture of the rock and ice is excellent, and so are the clouds which give even more depth to the shot. I had to wait two days of downpour into a cramped tent to see Mt.Cook, and I was particularly lucky, so my hat off to any crisp picture of it.

 

Coming to the black triangle, it has some merits to me. First, clearly, helps anchoring the mountain in a space of its own, in front of the sky, but not immediately in our faces. Actually, more than graphically, the triangle finds a good interpratation in moving the mountain further from us, making it even less reachable.

 

Triangles, by the way, are a bit everywhere in the picture. The upside-down blue one to the top right, the blue one to the left, which is a mirror of the black one... so, no big compositional problems for me.

 

The only thing I would like to hear Ian's opinion about is the possibility of cropping off some of the triangle from the right...

Thanks for your comments Salvatore. I did consider cropping in from the right hand side the reason I opted not too is bcause I noticed that the dark slope actually mirrors the height of the Mt Cook which I found to be graphically interesting. Enough in fact that I preferred that quality over the benefits of reducing the size of the black triangle. Try cropping in, see if you don't think "something" pictorial is lost.

Ian as you suggest me to try, my humble, and extreme, proposal would be to remove everything to the right of the "col" in the ridge. There are two reasons. First, the front ridge lessens background mountain...I know you were after this but that indeed I do not like. Second, the games of triangles might become more pronounced: you would have a clear triangle of sky above the col and a smaller one of black rock below it. Moreover the triangle of black rock would become as large as the triangle of sky to the top left and some harmony might be preserved.