gfisch9862

Due to a quick change of plan, I ended up here without my Nikon. The iPhone did great!

Interesting 'painterly' quality.

Difficult to balance sky and keep the somber mood. Any suggestions?

Sunset over West L.A. Other than cropping, this is as it was shot.

Definitely has the Mordor mood. Is that Frodo under the tree?

While I can see you trying to capture a mood, the overall local contrast is too low and just makes for a dark image. Try burning (darkening) the trees and the bright sky of the left and increasing the overall contrast. You should be able to get the 'mood', but make the image more alive.

Interesting image, but the subtle lens vignetting in the corners detracts from the clean composition. Consider either removing them completely, or adding a more obvious vignette that draws the views eyes from the bottom, up the sand dune and ends with the clouds.

Hi Larry, Thanks for the comment. Being a part-time, adjunct Geology professor, I would bring my students to this location for field trips and would document things in a "scientific" (e.g. boring) manner and in color. The locations are pretty monochrome orange and tan. However, the unique shapes and contrasts kept drawing me back. Recently, I decided to image these using my "large format", B&W seeing using a digital camera. Many of the images were shot with a Perspective Control lens to get me closer to what I used to do with the 4x5 view camera While many of these images are very abstract, they definitely communicate something to me as well. Thanks for noticing! Greg

Seems like a great balance to me. I also like the iridescent tone on the leaves. Nice job!

Normally, seeing the sharpening artifacts around the dark areas work against things. But in this case, they add an interesting effect that compliments the design. Well done!

Here's an update with a different tone curve.

Here's an updated version with changes to the tone curve.