Navigating The Curves

This is the best one so far imo. Everything leads to a point in the distant mountains and then leads back out. The clouds mimic the 'ribbing' on the big dune. Just a delightful image. I wouldn't suggest a thing for fear of making it worse. Great job.

PS The horizon is at the half way mark but it works because of the bilateral symmetry in the composition.

Wow! This is Fantastic! Really nice work, Harley. Great comp, wonderful light and shadow, beautiful color and textures. Love this one!   Cheers, Nick

Harley,

I was writing the best critique of my life..... then Windows 10 decided to reboot and update with zero warning. Frickin' MS.  Ok, so it wasn't my best critique, but one will never know... ;-)

I'll try and remember...  This is actually a terrific dune landscape image. I really like the beautifully lit ridge line that leads the eye in to the frame.  However, I must be honest and say that this is my least favorite of your last number of images from this trip.  Don't get me wrong, still a beautiful image, wonderfully processed, etc.  I think it's mainly the 50/50 comp where I'm not sure what was more important, the sky or the dunes?  I know that it's perfectly fine to have the entire, wide open space as to what you were after and I suspect that's the case, but just not clear to me.  The shadowed mountain opens up nicely in the large view, but the mountains kinda throw this off balance to me.  These are minutely minor, but had to justify in my own mind...   Better quit while I'm behind.

Lon

That dune ridge line is perfect and takes me nicely into this desert scene as does the ripples in the sand, Harley. I also like the interplay of light and shadow here. My only suggestion; just my personal preference; would be a crop of about 1/3 of the sky. I think that still leaves the best clouds and places more of an emphasis on all the wonderful stuff in the dunes. Either way you can not go wrong.

Ed

Harley: You guys really came away with some marvelous images and this is another. I might like a tiny bit less sky to push the horizon up but this works very well as is. Most excellent.>=))>

Harley, the light on the dunes is wonderful, you've captured a great moment in time. You have done an outstanding job with the processing, I really like the way you handled the shadows in the dunes, just the right level of contrast and detail. I am not bothered by the dark mountains on the right, I think they are balanced by the strong dune shadow in the left half of the image. I'll admit that I'm a little torn about the sky. I'm generally not a fan of 50/50 horizons, and usually only like that approach with spectacular skies (which this is not).  But I get it that the shape of the clouds somewhat mirrors the shape of the dunes. Maybe a compromise would be to crop a slice off the top, keeping about half of the cloud on the left. This would get the horizon more off center, while retaining most of the shape repetition.

Excellent capture of the dunes and light, Harley. Excellent comp, and very pristine.  

This is a beauty, Harley. Some superb lines in the comp. that pull the eye nicely through the frame. The high contrast processing adds some nice drama. I'm on the fence on the 50/50 framing. On one hand I like the expansive sky and radiating clouds but I could also see experimenting with cropping some sky out. If you choose to play with a crop, I could also see taking a bit off the right side.

The 50-50 composition works well here due to the nice clouds filling empty sky. The color is wonderful, and more dramatic than your other dune images.

Honestly, it is difficult to pick a favorite of dune series--they are all excellent.
--P

I really like the light you captured here. Like the comp a lot too. it just works! The clouds and blue sky add  quite a bit. I think it works equally well with a crop off the top leaving just about or slightly more than half of the sky. then you still get everything the sky adds, but also get that emphasis on the light and the dunes that Lon was looking for.

You caught some great light and views of these dunes, Harley.  The long snaking view of the sunlit ridges leads very well back to the distant mountains.  I'm finding the darkness of the top of the sky somewhat distracting.  Leaves me wondering about some dodging up there or cropping to a pano.