Monument Valley Wagon Wheel

[ghcoe]

I wish I was just a little lower to hide the vehicles, but outside of that what do you think.
F-stop: f/8
ISO: 64
Aperture: 3.7

[denja]

This is a beautiful image. It's a wall hanger except for the detail that you have already mentioned. It does need some level adjustment for luminosity and contrast and I have included my go at that. If you can not readily get back for a re shoot, I personally think I would consider spending the time to clone out the vehicles. Great job!

Jim

[windrider86]

I would probably clone out the road and the vehicles.
What highway is that?

[ghcoe]

Originally Posted by windrider86

I would probably clone out the road and the vehicles.
What highway is that?

You can not really see the highway in this picture. It does run through the picture though and it is hwy 163. The road you see is actually a road into the parking lot of Goulding's Trading Post. John Wayne stayed here as well as the filming crews for Henry Fords Westerns. The cabin that John Wayne stayed in is about 100 feet behind where I took this picture.

A storm was blowing in when I took this picture. Loved how the sky and shadows worked for the picture. George.

[windrider86]

[QUOTE=ghcoe;809838]You can not really see the highway in this picture. It does run through the picture though and it is hwy 163. /QUOTE]

Thats pretty cool about John Wayne. Is this Arizona or ????????

[ghcoe]

[QUOTE=windrider86;809864]

Originally Posted by ghcoe

You can not really see the highway in this picture. It does run through the picture though and it is hwy 163. /QUOTE]

Thats pretty cool about John Wayne. Is this Arizona or ????????

Monument Valley is right on the border of Arizona and Utah. Lots of old westerns were filmed there as well as parts of a few other well known movies. It is desolate there now, I can only imagine how desolate it was in the 40's and 50's.

[A Team]

I love this photo. Interesting framing.

I cannot really add any more than what has been said, except, on my screen, I like the richer color of your image, and the details from the fence and shaded area of the one that was adjusted. If you can combine the two, I think it would be perfect! Well done.

[ghcoe]

Thanks, I normally take a lot of pictures during out trips. Usually I just point and shoot, but sometimes I take my time to set up a shot. I had totally forgotten I had taken this shot until I was downloading the pictures form the trip and it instantly stood out form the rest. We had friends with us on this trip and we did do a large blow up of it for them for Christmas. They love it!

[EasternSierra]

The horizon is sloping downward from left to right. This is causing me to feel off balance and makes me want to follow the line straight out of the page. A slight level correction should fix that easily.

I would spend the time to clone out the pavement on the left and the cars. It's a great exposure of a wonderful scene, and you captured it quite well. But the pavement and vehicles destroy the "Old West" feeling of the shot. I think it would be worth it to zoom in to about 300%, and carefully and methodically clone out the cars and pavement. There is also a semi-truck visible at the top of the wheel, which I find distracting, but easily fized with careful cloning.

I also think the sky could be burned a bit. It will bring out more detail and drama in the clouds. You can make a Curves Adjustment to get extra contrast, and than use your Burn Brush to darken the sky just a touch, and create just a bit more drama.

Have you conmsidered running this through the Channel Mixer for a B&W conversion? Put your red channel at 100%, and watch the contrast just POP off the page between those red rocks, and the blue in the sky...This would work very well, in my opinion, as a B&W...

[EasternSierra]

I certainly hope you don't mind, but...I had a quick go...



The first thing I did was to straighten the horizon, and make it level.

Than I converted to B&W using the Channel Mixer. Settings were:
Red +100
Blue 0
Green 0
Monochrome output at a level of -10 to darken the overall image and add drama.

Than I used Curves to adjust for max contrast. I used my clone brush to remove the cars at the fenceline and the barn at the top of the wheel. I left the pavement alone. In B&W, it is much less noticeable, and almost looks like a dirt road. I figured it was better than trying to clone it and ending up with a mess...

Lastly, I used my burn brush to bring out more depth and drama in the clouds, being careful not to hit the fence posts along the way. I also burned the distant monuments a bit to add depth and contrast.

Let me know when you have seen this. It is hosted in a private section of my personal website, so it is only visible here. I will be happy to remove it from view, my server, and my hard drive once you've seen it...