Sunset at Valley Of Fire. Another View, same location as the other image (link below). Slightly different angle and few minutes later when sun was getting below horizon,
Nice soft light, sweeping curves, and color on the horizon. I'm not completely sold on the processing, though. The darkening of the distant hills (blend? GND?) is a bit distracting, and the darkening of the sky looks too black to my eyes. An attractive photo, nonetheless.
A cool composition you have here, you really nailed that. But I agree that the sky is just too dark compared to the foreground. I would brighten up the sky, and then also darken the foreground a bit selectively.
Thanks everyone for the nice comments and C&C. I played with lightening the sky a bit and rebalancing the tones.
One observation: By lightening the sky / horizon i am loosing the smooth transition effect between the sky/rocks transition line. The rocks are sharply in focus and standing out. I may need to look at my processing and do some selective de-focusing to regain the perception of depth and distance.
How do you smooth the transition areas in this situation?
I'll tweak further as i get some time, print both versions this week and report back.
IMHO this photo looks great with the sun rays seem to highlight the lower part of the foreground sandstone.
I may want to make the top portion of the sky a little bit darker instead.
Well done, msoomro.
