Mono blaze

vibrant, would be nice to see larger version, love the composition!!

Wow! Fantastic color.....love the comp as well. The very top of the tall FG tufa could be lightened slightly.... probable grad effect...but that's a very minor point.

Love the wash of warm light and the glow it gives the entire image. Wonderful capture top to bottom

Great image. Beautiful light on the ski and cast on the terrain's surface. Very well done!

Sweet light and beautiful colors. I might chop off the bottom 20% or so because I think it takes away from the delicious meat above.

Wow, what a shot. I do agree with Kory on the crop. The top 2/3 of this image with the light on the rocks and that incredible sky is simply amazing. Kudos.

Thanks everyone! I'll try to get a cropped version up soon.

Fantastic light and color. The glow on the rocks is gorgeous.

I like this one much better than the first Peter. The light on the rocks makes this sing. Congratulations.

Incredible indeed. Awesome shot Peter.

I like your comp here Peter. The reds are full-on but work well to punch up the drama. I would burn down the lighter fg rocks a bit for balance or a small crop. Nice shot!

Nice composition Peter. Love the rich colors and the scene looks very other wordly, like something right out a science fiction movie (Martian landscape perhaps). I agree with David's suggestion of burning the foreground a little more. It appears to me a bit on the pinkish side and clashes with the rest of the scene a little.

Peter, I like this more than the other you posted- brighter, nice sweep of tufas, and the orange reflection. Real nice image! Considerations might be to lighten the top of the left tufa caught by the grad and a slight crop off the bottom. The stick in the lower left edge catches the eye.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Here is a repost of a cropped version, lightened up the upper most tufa and removed the stick that was in the lower left.

Also, here is a repost of the original with the dodging in the foreground, again removing the stick and brightening up the upper tufa. As for the pink, I think that was pretty natural, some parts of the tufa formations where white (I'm assuming the new saline buildups) and did catch a pink cast during sunset.

Peter,
Looks like you had some nice conditions for your trip and this is a great Mono shot. I could see a slight crop off the bottom, but still a great image with Pirate Ship Tufa in the background. I was in Mammoth with my son over the weekend for some late season skiing, but didn't get out with the camera. Hope to see some more shots from your trip.

Thanks Rudy, Sounds like you arrived when I was just leaving town. I was amazed the ski area was still open, I didn't think there was that much snow still on the mountain.

Great comp, Peter! A bit different than the usual take on Mono, and I appreciate that. The warm light/color are fantastic - nicely saturated without being too overboard.

One nit I have is with the foreground rock, I know the light probably wasn't the same on it, but it just seems way less saturated and a lot cooler than the rest of the scene - since it's brighter, it distracts me a bit, as I want to be led through the image to the tufas in the distance. Another option would be a 4:5 or 3:4 crop from the top down, cropping off the bottom of the image, if you didn't want to do any color/brightness manipulations on the FG.

I will also agree with Mark that the top of the upper-left tufa has more darkening than I'd like. In addition, it seems it has a little halo effect going on - not sure if this is because it's darker, or from sharpening, or from a mask that's slightly off..

Overall I love it, very moody, and I love the shape/arrangement of the rocks leading through the image in your composition. Having only seen a few of your images, I'm already able to recognize this from the thumbnail as one of yours via the color handling and composition!

EDIT: Looks like you already posted some revised versions, and others had already posted similar thoughts to mine. Sorry for not reading all the comments before posting.. I would say on your latest revision that I'd still like to see the fg rock darker, although since you say it's natural, maybe you'd prefer to try my crop suggestion. And the halo issue doesn't seem as prevalent anymore on the upper-left tufa, but still seems to be present..

Thanks Alex, Glad my images are able to stand apart from the rest. It was funny, because there was a group of about 30 other photographers lined up along one of the shorelines trying to get that "classic" comp of the tufa formations seen in the upper right. I think the haloing was a mixture of both masking and the tone difference which I did notice while going back. I think I am more drawn to the cropped version I posted than the rest of the foreground to really emphasize that rich orange glow.

Incredible light.

Great shot hardly any shadows and great color

Thanks Jack, the light was generous and the position I was in enabled me to shoot with minimal shadows.

Beautiful color for sure. Love the clouds and the tufa formations leading to the back of the image. Nice work Peter.

Repost is even better.

Yep, the cropped version is definitely stronger. Now, the emphasis is fully on the beautiful light where it should be.

Thanks Kory, I actually like the cropped version much more now after looking at both of them a few times.