Nevada Still Life

Nice--rabbitbrush is such a cool subject, the warm colors work so well and its usually pretty symmetrical.
I'm gonna be a bit tough here, mainly because i think there's some clear things to critique here and hopefully critique will be useful to you. First, this is a classic case of an overly busy comp. The fg subject is awesome, but the viewer (me) gets distracted by all the stuff happening in the bg. The subject here is the still life--you've got to figure out a way to isolate it more. Not easy, but requires spending some time checking out every possible angle to shoot from--if none of them work, then move on! Second, the processing has taken all the life out of the brush, looks low in contrast and oversharpened. To create the illusion of depth you need more tonal range (more contrast) in the brush, and optimal sharpening.

Really nice color in the rocks, the bush , and the tree trunk in the upper right corner. Bumping up the contrast in the midtones as Stan suggests would help make this a stronger image. If you are not familiar with them already, would take a look at Tony Kuyper's luminosity masks. He has great tutorials on his website. Great tool for working with any image.

Howdy Stan. I really appreciate the feedback and, in fact, that's exactly why I posted this and other photos. This scene was a real challenge for me. I was acompanying a friend and colleague to an archeological site. This scene is surrounded by very old petroglyphs and other ancient features. These circumstances were a bit more limiting than a trip on my own just for photography. I was very disappointed with the shots of the glyphs - they were simple record shots. Actually, this representation of the rabbitbrush looks pretty realistic on my notebook monitor. Winter has bleached the color from the stems and left the flowers a soft, pale yellow, which is what attracted me to this scene, but I'm questioning my technique and the monitor. All my processing has been done in Lightroom, but it looks like I need to learn CS4. Hope you will continue to provide feedback, thanks.

Really nice color in this one. My only nit, and it is small is to have maybe a touch more room around the bush itself. Just a scosh tight.