Yuccas at Sunrise

I like the foreeground and your intetion here.Beautiful mood. i'm not really sure about the twig in upper left corner. The small black spot on the right side of the sky just below the twig is a bit distracting to me.

Neat idea and wonderful colors & sunburst in the sky. I think simplifying the picture would probably improve it. I don't think you can do it with this pic., but not having the tree branches in the ulc nor the tree on the right would make for a much "cleaner" presentation of a prairie sunrise. Nice job on the blending.

Lots to like here...the cool blue/green of the cactus against the heat of the sunstar is great. I agree with the comments on the branch and blob in the ulc, but that's my only nit.

I like the image and the idea , and in addition to the other suggestions you might even the exposure between foreground/midground with background just a little; nothing drastic.

Richard,

Seems to be a theme here about liking the idea and what you were trying to do here. Of course hindsight fixes everything, but had you moved a 1/2 step to the right, you could have got the setting sun to split the two plants. But the main thing for me is the obvious use of the grad. Clearly the top of the yuccas are much darker and they should all have the same light values and so to me the top and bottom are far enough off that it kind of diminishes the image a bit for me. Perhaps some selective dodging and burning could help. I realize the time of day kinda dictates the darkness, but I could see brightening this a little bit too.

Lon

I definitely like the "in your face" view of the yucca plants Richard. The grad definitely darkened up the trees a bit too much and I would try to recover the shadows a bit there if possible.

Like it.