Another desert sunrise..

[Ultra Magnus]

I guess it's my kick right now (sunrises and sunsets)...

Is this photo lacking something? I wasn't really taken by it but my wife likes it a lot (she's my first critic in everything!)....

[jar_e]

I like it. The colors are beautiful, but I might crop a tad off the top. Alot of negative space up there. Other then that, I like it. The sun in the centre adds a nice subject in the middle.

Nice shooting,

Jared

[Knight]

Great sunset superb colors , like jar_e says i would crop the top just a bit . Again great capture

[Yoyo Szeto]

Hi,
The shot is beautiful. I especially like the cloud pattern and the saturated blue sky. Agree with Jared to remove a part of the top. Well done.
yoyo

[mjs1973]

I really like this shot. I love the colors, and I don't mind the large open sky at all. I cropped the top off of this, and IMO it didn't add anything to the photo. When I first look at this photo, my eyes go right to your main subject, the silhouetted tree and the setting sun, but then my eyes travel upwards into the clouds. My eye follows the clouds as they stretch towards the top of the photo to where they dissapear into the dark blue part of the image. It is for this reason that I wouldn't crop the top off. I feel like my eyes need that space to wonder into since that is where the clouds lead to. I hope this makes sence.

[GB1]

bmadau.

Well, to be honest I pretty much feel as you do that it's missing something here. It's different in its composition that it has about 75 percent negative space. Sometimes that adds a unique feel to a shot. Overall though I think that the neg. space pulls the viewer to the top part of the photo but that other than the thin clouds there there's nothing really there for the viewer to grab ahold of. The sunrise itself is Ok, but it lacks the warm colors that look good when constasted against the blue sky (ie, red, yellow, orange, etc). The Joushua tree could be the subject, but is somewhat clipped off and therefore doesn't present enough information to be a worthy subject.

Not a bad picture, but I'm sure that you'll encounter many better sunrises. All's you can really do is be in an area with a good foreground subjects at the right time and hope the weather cooperates. The area should present a lot of ops for you with its dusty atmosphere, which can really add to the reds...

GB

[christopher_platt]

I like it. I wouldn't crop the top, I think the way it fades up into nothing causes they eye to move back to the bottom and start again. I really like the tree, too.
Chip

[hellinvader]

i not quite agree with GB, i like this pic alot, the color is marvellous. can't expect as much red in sunrise as sunset, that just the way sun light works. i guess it's possiblly GB's monitor, since the cloud are not that thin, its pretty rich in texture on my monitor. i won't crop the top either, as mjs said: "I feel like my eyes need that space to wonder into since that is where the clouds lead to."

[Ultra Magnus]

Thansk for all the replies... I cropped it to fit 8 x 10 proportions, so I had a choice of taking some off the top, or the bottom, and I chose to take it off the bottom. I liked the strong gradient from the bright horizon to dark blue. I also used a circular polarizer, Ive been experimenting with that a lot lately. I like the way it deepens the blues in the sky.

GB1 - I hear what you are saying. I drove around like mad trying to find a suitable forground for that picture. I saw the clouds in the east early in the morning from my bathroom window (it's the only window in the house that faces east!) and decided that even with my 102F fever (had the flu) I was going to go out and shoot that sunrise. I drove around in the desert, and couldn't find a good perspective for that shot. I was running out of time (the sun was rising quickly) so I abandoned the dirt roads I was on and just stareted barreling across the desert, I even hit a trunk of a downed/dead joshua tree that was hidden in weeds, causing some slight damage to my truck. I finally realized I was out ouf time so I stopped where I was and took the shot that I could. So, I should at least get an A for effort, but I really did want a better foreground.

Thanks for all the comments!!

[GB1]

Bmadau - A very worthy effort! Probably not worth killing yourself but I know how it is when you see a good op, and you just know that it won't last more than a few minutes before the light changes. Hope your truck isn't too bad.

hellinvader - yeah, normally sunrises don't have the color of sunsets. Probably because when it heats up thermals cause winds to increase, stirring up the dust in the air. But there are exceptions: I took this shot at Joushua Tree in the morning once. But I think I got really lucky with the color.