* Edit: Thanks for all the awesome comments, everyone! :D I'm stoked to have finally ribboned. :)
I ended up putting more effort into getting this shot than any other photo I have ever taken. Hopefully the shot "set up" will pay off and this will score halfway decent. As soon as the Steve Davidson challenge was announced, I knew I wanted to drive out to the Superstition Moutains (where Steve was lost). I wanted to see the actual terrain and thought it would be the perfect place to take a shot for this challenge.
So my good friend Danny (Pander on DPC) and I decided to take an Arizona road trip all weekend. We left Friday night, drove out to Sedona, and got there just before sunrise. After taking some photos there, we headed to Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction. We took the Siphon's Draw hiking trail up into the Superstition Mountains before sunset Saturday evening. This shot was taken near the beginning of the trail (relatively - the first part of the trail DOES have a 1000 ft elevation gain). Danny stood on a group of rocks next to a cactus and pointed the binoculars out towards the mountains.
Whether this shot scores decent or not, I had a GREAT time driving out to see the Superstiton Mountains and so many of the places that stdavidson likes to shoot - now I see why he does! :) Yes - a 1000 mile road trip for a damn challenge entry. Now I know I've lost it... ;) BTW, most importantly - Welcome Back Steve!
Post-Processing
---------------
* Reduced exposure in RAW
* Ran Noise Ninja twice
* Levels
* Hue/Saturation
* Cloned out imperfections in sky
* Cloned out the needles on the cactus, which were causing it to look out-of-focus
* Crop, resize, add border, Save For Web
Statistics
Place: 3 out of 107 Avg (all users): 7.0848 Avg (commenters): 8.3750 Avg (participants): 6.5614 Avg (non-participants): 7.3611 Views since voting: 8452 Views during voting: 332 Votes: 165 Comments: 37 Favorites: 5 (view)
After a slight hiatus from critiquing (new house, big RN cert test, new job, blah, blah, blah), I have decided to pull a few from the queue. Yours is first, and just happens to be a ribbon winner. So with that, congrats on your first ribbon and your highest scoring image to date.
Camera Work/Technical: This is a terrific choice of settings to keep the terrific color of the sky while keeping the profiles of the photographer and the cactus solid.
Lighting: Again, near perfection. I can also see why Steve likes to shoot this area.
Composition/Content: I find this area to be my only viable area of critique for this image. It feels just a bit tight on the composition with the photographer shooting toward the outside of the frame. It almost leaves me longing to see what he's looking at. Perhaps just a bit more empty space on his right would have loosened it up a bit, but there really was no good reason to change anything. The voters were very pleased with your choice of composition. You did a fine job meeting the challenge, and did so with the types of images I had in mind for this challenge.
My Opinion: While I did not enjoy the challenge, nor many of its entries, I am glad to see that this one did as well as it did. Looking at it in voting, I would have guessed that it was also fit for a basic editing challenge. It wasn't far off. Again, congrats on a very fine image, and one well worthy of its final placement, especially considering the miles that you put on stepping out of the house to get it. Great work!
Wow! Congratulations on your first ribbon and first 7+ score!!!!!
What an amazing story! I can't believe you drove all the way from Riverside to the Supertitions. Sounds like you had a great time. Wished I could have shared it with you. While "missing" one of the trails I hiked on was the Siphon's Draw trail!
Good silhouette and the blue and gold colors are spectacular. This is my kind of imagery.
This picture is very revealing. You can plainly see that I was so lost that I did not even know which way to point a camera anymore, even if I'd had one. One of the unfortunate aspects of the whole experience is I did not even get a single picture to show from it. It is good there were no pictures of me, though. I looked frightful, probably 30 years older and felt like an old weatherworn prospector. - Steve
not only fits the challenge perfectly but is a beautiful image as well. my only problem is the way the photographer is facing, I fell it would be better to be facing into the photo rather than out to the right. Still I'm picking this for a top ten.
Searching the Superstition Mountains
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
