Fire under the Heaven

John, I like this very dramatic image a lot. The formations, lighting and color make it for me. Good job!!! Chet

Very dramatic, whoa!

This must have been quite a scene in person. The saturation seems a bit heavy to the point of losing detail, noticeably in the rocks. It also seems that the sky and ground are in a struggle for attention- I would probably crop off 1/2 of the clouds and go with more of a pano orientation.

i agree with Matt, very dramatic

Thanks, Chet, Matt, Bob, Hamed.

Bob, Thanks for suggestions. The cloud was so red that everything was saturated with red. I de-saturated red in ps. Let me try a little more.

Great view. Tis' a wild sunset, and a great subject in the foreground! There does seem to be too much contrast here, particularly in the actual landscape (not as much in the sky). The land looks a tad overbaked, to me. Nice image/good timing. It's a beautiful area...

John,

Not hard to see why this was such a special sunset for you! What an awesome sky! And you did very well with choosing your landscape to complete the composition.

I think the saturation is pretty good, we all know how intense the sky/clouds can get. Only two small suggestions. the first, is the far bg hills are kinda purple, I'd mask out your colors there a little bit. Not a big deal, but the other suggestion would be to slightly raise the midtones in the pine/juniper/landscape. Actually, the larger version is better. I think a great candidate for TK's Darks Triple Play!

A wonderful moment.

Lon

Thanks Nathan & Lon, great suggestions.

Wow- great light and you capitalized well. Thanks for doing credit to my hometown

That's a very impressive display of clouds, and it feels like the rock spires are almost touching them. I feel like this is perhaps too dramatic of a blend though. It looks like you double converted a RAW file, but really cranked up the saturation, contrast, and used a very warm white balance for the sky. This is based on the clouds near the top of the frame compared to the clouds further back in the distance. You certainly have some wonderful light here, but I get the feeling that you forced it in photoshop to be something that perhaps it wasn't, and that's why there is such contrast between the distant sky and the cloud over the foreground rocks.

Thanks Ben. It was not double processed from a single RAW file. Instead, it was two exposure blended together so that I bring out some detail in the background. The white balance was not changed between two layers. The color was intense out of camera.

BTW. Enjoyed your web site. Great collections there.