Desert Landscape - successful exposure?

[Doug Sundseth]

I had to check to see if what I wrote is what I meant to write, and shockingly enough it was.

To clarify:

If you want to show details in the foreground, the foreground in the picture you actually took is significantly underexposed. (While I'm pretty sure this was an accurate rendition of the light, your eyes can shift aperture very quickly, so the foreground would probably have looked brighter in person.)

If you want to show silhouettes in the foreground, you need to drop the exposure from that used in this photo (which will also increase the saturation in the sky. You would also want stronger shapes to carry the foreground as silhouettes.

[milosh]

OK, it makes sense, sorry for that!
To me it sounded like you were giving a lesson to a newbie about the usual ways to show (or not show) details in the foreground, which then makes the brackets misplaced.

[sv_goon]

Thank you all for the feedback and the discussion. Sorry I haven't been back to the thread. Pretty much the next day after posting this I found out I didn't have a job any more. Which is more work than it sounds like. The good news is I will have more time to work on my photography!

Originally Posted by shruggy63

For me the burnt out sun totally overwhelms this shot.

Originally Posted by flytyer57

I agree that the sun is overpowering in this photo. I'd crop it out.

I've been playing a little with different crops to remove the sun, and what I'm finding is that I remove enough to get rid of the blown out section, it becomes a pretty boring photo. If I leave just a little peeking in from the side, it does look blown out and distracting.

Originally Posted by katia

am i the only one that feels like this shot is perfect the way it is?

which is strange! because i usually seem to go for overexposure.

i really like it, i tried to block the sun with my hand but i liked it better with the sun in.

This is what I'm finding as well.

Originally Posted by sk66

IMO, you've tried to do too much with one picture...

Thank you. That is entirely true. It was a pretty special place to be at that moment and I was trying to capture everything. I guess that's why we keep trying!

Originally Posted by TheCheesWizz

The only thing I would suggest is cropping out some of the sky, its a little bland and doesn't add much. Make it a really wide picture and I think it will be excellent. Great shot.

Originally Posted by RahulT

There is too much portion of sky captured in shot(just plain blue) ,instead you could of focused on plants, sun rays.

This is a composition tip I need to tattoo on my eyelids or something. A little sky goes a long way. The foreground is the interesting thing, for sure.

Originally Posted by Krusty79

To me it feels like you have tucked the sun away and I want to see it! You have the old dynamic range issue, as your camera cannot correctly expose the bright sun and darker foreground. You're going to have to do some combination of using a ND grad filter and or bracketing your shots so you can do an exposure blend or HDR.

Even using my 2 stop ND grad filter, I usually have to do an exposure blend to get the ground and relatively bright sky both correctly exposed.

Originally Posted by Doug Sundseth

The foreground is either underexposed by 2-3 stops (if you want to show detail and color there) or overexposed by around a stop (if you want silhouettes). To get the former, you'll need to significant post work and possibly some exposure stacking or HDR.

If you're trying for silhouettes, I think you need stronger shapes to carry the photo. This could be achieved by getting much closer to a single tree or by finding a better collection to serve as the foreground.

I think the current placement of the sun also doesn't work well. If it were more in-frame, it could be a good image element, but on the edge as you have it, it mostly just pulls me out of the image.

I'd also consider stepping back from the foreground elements you want to include and zooming in to increase the weight of the hills in the background.

Originally Posted by milosh

OK, it makes sense, sorry for that!
To me it sounded like you were giving a lesson to a newbie about the usual ways to show (or not show) details in the foreground, which then makes the brackets misplaced.

Thanks to all of you for this analysis. One of the things I thought was cool was it was sort of halfway between a silhouette and a more standard landscape shot. Clearly didn't work as well as I had hoped.

My plan is to wait for the sun to come back, then go to a more familiar area and try some of these different approaches, including getting my hands on a ND grad filter, which sounds like a thing that serious landscape photographers need. I'll post some of the results.

Thanks again. This is really helpful.