Landscape Photo Competition 2014 No 2 : Entry Number 190

Judges Comment

This is a fantastic canyon and a great location for photography. (That is once you get down there!). And this is a fairly sound effort, you have found a good angle to reduce most of the flare from the strong light through the gorge, you have applied some density to the lighter top of the gorge to darken that a little (but I wonder what tool you used, the result is pretty noticeable and black). Ideally this photo should have been taken with a neutral density grad filter to darken down its upper half, or for the more digitally minded amongst you, in two or three frames with different exposures. (If you use a steady tripod you can take several frames and then use them as layer masks in photoshop or for making an HDR image). You have strong lines leading into the image which is good and a nice slow shutter effect on the water but a stronger foreground subject would have made this much better, those stones on the left for example, would be great much closer. So a lower view with more attention on those lovely reddish stones and/or some leaves. The extra dimension makes a photograph more of a story.