Hard Canyon Light - modified version

[churly]

The hardness of the light is pretty representative of the feeling of the evening.  There were no soft edges on anything.  Is it too harsh?

EDIT - I have worked on a couple of these using some advice from your comments and newly installed ACR 7.  Many thanks for that.  Just for the purposes of scale, the dot and wake in the water of the first image is a boat and two water skiers.  The second one has a simplified foreground.

Thanks for having a look.

[sdwilsonsct]

Great subject, nice composition, perfect focus and exposure, but somehow the subject is not as engaging as others. The light is part of it. I wonder how it looks in colour.
The foreground has a warm cast, and the background a blue tint, to my eyes.
Scott

[Tony Jay]

Well, clearly there was no haze about that particular evening so even stuff in the distance is sharply delineated.

Actually a nice shot.
A colour rendition would possibly help to allow us to get a feel for the image.
For you however there is nothing to apologise over here.

Regards

Tony Jay

[Jeremy Roussak]

I find the presence of the tree on the left distracting: there isn't enough contrast between it and the background to make it stand out, yet it intrudes enough to draw my eye. The whole scene also looks rather flat, despite the harshness of the light. It doesn't quite work for me.

I too would be interested to see a colour version, though.

Jeremy

[Kerry L]

The image is well composed, however, there are a couple of things that I feel detracts from it. It looks like there is uneven tinting, the foreground has a warm cast that is poorly applied. Were you trying to add an tint to the left dead wood? It has spilled over and you stopped short on the highest branch. You might try a mask to get this done.

I find the whole thing to be a bit crunchie.... over sharpened a bit.

A re-work of your post processing should make this a better image, and as others mentioned a colour version would be nice to see.

[fike]

...It looks like there is uneven tinting, the foreground has a warm cast that is poorly applied. Were you trying to add an tint to the left dead wood? It has spilled over and you stopped short on the highest branch. You might try a mask to get this done.
...

+1

That tree on the left competes with the background.  Those divergent textures and shapes need separation of good bokeh or sky to be realized in the same image.  Here they are overlaid and they are not harmonious.

[churly]

Thanks everyone for the instructive comments.  They are much appreciated.  I'm not sure about the tint issue.  There isn't any selective tint applied just a very slight warming to the whole image as the last process.  I've been to this location several times but have yet to bring back the image I want.  I have attached the color version which has a different character but suffers from the same issues with the dead tree on the left and to me a lack of definition in the canyon walls (that's why I went to the B&W).

Again thanks for the feedback.

[fike]

In your search for lighting that makes this location work, you may want to pay closer attention to the time of day and time of the year.  You would really like that whole valley lit-up with some sunlight or even moonlight, perhaps at an angle from behind you. What direction are you looking in this shot?

[PhotoEcosse]

Now that I have seen the colour version, I have to agree that it works better in monochrome.

Have you tried using the shadows slider in the latest Lightroom/ACR versions to bring a bit more detail out of the shadow areas?

[churly]

PhotoEcosse - I had the update sitting on my desk waiting for installation.  Thumbs up to the update.  I replaced the original images with two new ones.

[stamper]

Anyone looking now - today - at this post will be bewildered at looking through the post? I was scratching my head wondering if my monitor was wonky. Two posters referring to a monochrome image when it was clearly a colour one. You should hve posted the colour images in addition to the monochrome ones instead of replacing them? 

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Anyone looking now - today - at this post will be bewildered at looking through the post? I was scratching my head wondering if my monitor was wonky. Two posters referring to a monochrome image when it was clearly a colour one. You should hve posted the colour images in addition to the monochrome ones instead of replacing them? 

+100!

It's very confusing now, and no comparison is possible.