Starved Sandstone

[CaboWabo]

No water running at Staved Rock State Park in Utica,IL 3 shots handheld

 

[Parker219]

Pretty cool. That looks like a nice spot to take HDR pics. I like the detail you were able to pull from the rocks on the left. You must have a steady hand because I dont notice any motion or alignment issues. Comment on my new HDR thread please.

 

[CaboWabo]

I dont know about steady I just used photomatix to align them thats all

 

[amolitor]

This is a nice technical exercise, but also a pretty good example of a problem lots of heavily tonemapped images see.

You've crushed the light from the scene, everything appears evenly lit from nowhere in particular, which is fine. That's a thing, people do it. What you have not done is solved the problems that directional light solves for you. Without the modeling effect of a definite light source, you need to find other ways to bring out the depth of the scene, and to resolve visual chaos.

This image has tons of lovely detail, you're done a good job of bringing up detail everywhere. What this image lacks is overall coherence. It feels quite flat -- I can't tell at all what angle the rock wall on the left of the frame has, for instance. Is it parallel to the film plane, or is it at a steep angle, receding away from us rapidly as the eye moves left to right? I can't even tell where the wall on the left ends, in a few places, it is so confused with the background rock coming in from the right.

The colors are great, there's a great deal of interesting texture in here, and there's some real technical goodness to be found, though. I like where you chose to stand -- the little tree really pulls the frame together as a composition.

 

[Rick58]

I see an overall diffused light like I would expect to see in an area like this. The sunlight is deflecting off the back wall and filtering into and filling this deep canyon. There is some shadow in the cut under the sunlit wall which is also shadowing the ground just outside the cut.
Just my take, but I don't see anything odd about it. I like it.

 

[CaboWabo]

Thanks amolitor I have some other shots to put up I am newbie really and just learning I will take what you have said and try to apply to the next outing to shoot