The Tipi Mango Circus

What a neat place, Nicolaus. I certainly like this. Hope you have more from here to show us.

Foreground is a bit busy for me but I do like the sun burst and the exposure. Ron

Hehe ... I really know what you're talking about, Nicolaus. People start mocking me about the dominance of vertical images I've got. I also try to make more vertical ones.

7 image blend?!? That's quite some work to do, but I see the tonality hurdles in here and can imagine why you had to go that way. Whatever time you spent on this one, it's well worth it and I really think that you've got a winner here. Awesome color palette and the flawless sun star is the perfect topping on this one.

Seven is a lot to blend manually! I've heard that the automated blending in CS5 is a big improvement, but haven't tried it yet (it's on my list of things to play with now that I've upgraded).

It looks like this has some great areas to explore. Hopefully the idiots don't find it.

This horizontal certainly doesn't look weak to me! Looks awesome! Wish there was a largerversion.

I like the scene overall, and your processing looks very good. I have to agree with Ron that the FG looks too busy; at least for my taste.

Thanks for the comments and critiques everyone. I agree with the busy foreground, and I plan on returning to the location in a week or two to spend more time exploring the area. This was a bit of a rushed shot as we had just driven back from Castle Gardens, and I caught this spot out of the corner of my eye. It's definitely a location of unlimited opportunities though. I've never seen anything quite like it.

Andreas, verticals always seem easier for me...not sure why. I suppose it has something to do with my style of photography...but it's always good to try and learn new things.

John, I have tried the hdr program with CS5, but it's still ages behind what you can do manually using selective masking, contrast masking, luminosity masking, and layer masks. Nothing beats a wacom tablet and the gradient tool when blending photos in my opinion. ;]

The reason for the 7 images is that I had to really work on the sun flare to tone it down without having any blow highlights, and I also used my finger to block the flare in a few shots to allow for areas of the image that otherwise would have had a huge flare across them, or been blown out. This allowed me to blend the hill area below the sun, and I also avoided that diagonal flare across most of the image. I'm not sure this level of detail and control can be done with automated software yet....

The sun should probably be a little brighter... Otherwise, I love it!

The sun looks quite odd for me otherwise it is very well done.