"Cryptic"
Last weekend, Jacob Klassen and I made a last-minute decision to visit this canyon to capture some unique light rays. We both had to set up and shoot our compositions quickly as people consistently visited the cave. Initially, I found the chaotic foreground a bit distracting. However, after uploading the files to the computer, I felt that the dead branches added to the image's overall mood and atmosphere. Besides blending a 7 image exposure blend to deal with the harsh light, not much went into this image's post-processing. The light rays and the soft sunburst along the canyon's edge did most of the work for this one. I hope you enjoy it!
What's not to enjoy??!??! Beautiful image.
Normally a background clipped like that would be an issue, but I think it works in this frame. Definitely looks like this would have been a difficult exposure with the extreme dynamic range; I think you pulled it off nicely.
I wonder what It would be like with a more defined sun-star as a focal point, but you would have likely lost the wonderful atmospheric glow and soft rays... Just pondering as I enjoy the scene...
Thank you for the comment! Yeah, even to the naked eye, the sky was extremely bright. I think bringing out the cloud/blue sky would look funky with this shot, so i kept it blown out :)
I think that the composition with this shot is perfect. In the same sense that lines lead the eye to the vanishing point of the picture, this shot has the cliff, the tree - with the light streaming in from behind to lead the eye to a place that is hidden in the light. Seems almost cinematic in its use. Really well done, Eric.
Thanks for the feedback, Darin! Glad you like it.