Marching east

Interesting and dramatic shot. The dynamic sky works great. The highlights look a bit flat in the small version but are OK in the larger one.

I really like the radiating lines, very powerful compositionally. Nicely done!

The shadows, clouds, and light make this very special, Vlad. Good eye for being able to grab this before the light was gone.

Stunning light! I especially like the way shadow and light of the FG mirror the cloud motion above. Nothing beats that intense lighting on the rock with the ominous clouds behind. The highlights on the distant rock look a little "hot" to me, not sure if you are able to tone them down a little to preserve more detail? Luckily you avoided your shadow in the image. Nicely done!

Thanks !

Harry : the highlights do have some details, but the red channel is clipped there.. I didn't take the second shot to blend and did all i could to save details and color, will look for other techniques.

As for the shadow - i struggled with the same shot before to avoid my shadow showing up and the solution is to hide in the shadow of the largest object, which limited composition a tiny bit.

Love the dramatic nature of the shot. The strong contrasts between light and the drawing together of the lines to the center really make it neat!

Always great to see something really special here and to me this is really special.

Very unique and dramatic/powerful image!

Not necessary, but the only thing I wish is that the upper highlights were tamed just a little more.

Fully accept the feedback wrt hightlights. I did tone them down a bit to show more details Compositionally i still want highlights to clearly stand out (in the absence of the central point of interest), thus trying to not burn them "too much".

Fantastic image, Vlad! Talk about being at the right place at the right time.

Guy

Great pre-visualization and execution here, Vlad. I think you did well with the processing considering the dynamic range of the image.

Yep, like that! great job and shot.

I try to avoid shooting with the sun directly behind me, but this is fantastic. This almost feels like a rover shot from Mars. The cloud motion adds to the otherworldly look.

Love how the strong shadows seem to point to the background.

I really enjoy the movement and the stark contrast in the fg

Hello, Vlad.
I've checked the channels and the the only channel that is completely damaged is the RED one. The GREEN and the BLUE channel are very nice. So you can recover any detail you need from there.
Here I put the blue channel (slightly darkened it) on a layer on top of your original image, set the blending mode to "Overlay" and painting in a mask where I wanted the detail to appear again. It's very simple. I overdid it a bit so that you can see the effect.

In the image you see 4 scenes ... the damaged red channel, the fine blue channel, your original image and the one after the reconstruction. Maybe this gives you an idea how you can deal with problems like that in the future.

Good luck, Andreas.

My favorite shot of yours ever and my favorite shot from this area I've ever seen. Shocking this doesn't get more comments. This is one of the most originated landscapes posted to NPN in awhile IMO. Mysterious and powerful!

Thanks Marc & all !!

Andreas - i took a closer look at the approach, your illustration are truly helpful. Thank you for taking the time. I see what's required in theory, will practice on 16 bit image tonight.