Thanks for the replies
re: "That's what rock formed 3 billion years ago looks like when exposed at the surface in present day desert Australia. Back 3 billion years ago, the rock was being formed in the shallows of a sea."
Isaac, without wanting to get too much into Geology debates, if I may quote Zegers et al from their 1998 paper "Vaalbara, Earth's oldest assembled continent? A combined structural, geochronological, and palaeomagnetic test":
"The only remaining areas of pristine 3.6±2.7 Ga crust on Earth are parts of the Kaapvaal and Pilbara cratons."
In addition, the oldest evidence of life on earth may be in the Pilbara, in the Strelley Pool Chert dated to 3.43 Ga.
However, this is more of an artistic forum rather than an earth sciences one. The take home message for the viewer is that this is an ancient landscape that you are looking at. Old as dirt, maybe older.
It's also a part of the world that you've almost certainly never seen, at least in this light. Unlike the Karijini National Park to the north - which although remote has now been well photographed - you won't find images from here in the portfolios of most Australian landscape photographers. And the logistical inconveniences involved in trying to get to this spot for sunrise mean that this may well be the first Chichester Range dawn photograph published (I google imaged it to check! There's one photo I could find of a sunrise from the East part of the park - where the campgrounds are - and a few of the place usually photographed over there, the cliff lookout. And there's quite a few Python Pool photos around - but that's about it.). This is not Yosemite.
So as for whether this is just 'art faire' material - not that I mind art fairs, but I don't think that was a compliment
- I guess the reasons to share it with the world are:
1. unique location/light
2. technical quality - I'm shooting this to print big, really big. Some of my other sunrise shots form the same location have more interesting weather, but I've never been happy that my 35mm gear ressolves the small details in the hills for this shot. In other words, my previous efforts look good on the web but won't cut it in a big landscape print. Technical camera, P65 and shift stitching mean that this photo has detail far better than anything I've managed before from here. I'll post some 100% crop comparisons of this vs my previous Canon efforts when I get home so you can see what I mean.
That mainly just leaves the issues of aesthetics. I've been trying to work out how much to saturate and what brightness to go with for the sky and foreground, and have been pretty unsure myself how to approach this for this image (hence my primary reason for posting it here). My problem is that nature didn't bless me with a particularly interesting sunrise, so I've felt that I needed to make the colors fairly saturated for the sky to compete with the foreground (here, I am pleased with what nature has done - the variety of plant life is certainly the best I've ever seen here). I guess given the subject matter - the Land Before Time is after all a children's cartoon, and I'm thinking that if there's anywhere on earth you'll find a dinosaur, this is it - I'm also going for a bit of a magical reality type look, rather than a grim, gritty Ansel-esque black and white.
Because Slobodan's reply to the initial post was so horrified
, I knocked up a mark 2 version with a much more understated sky. The image is composed of a two image shift stitch, with two separate exposures for sky and foreground, blended in post with a gradient in photoshop (rather than an ND grad suring the shooting stage, which I do about half the time). The gradient in the mark 2 version is not at all well done (the mark 1 version which posted with technical issues was more subtle), but it was midnight and I was really just trying to get the colors right so Slobodan would be able to sleep OK. I'll try and fix it properly tonight!
David, I'm glad it looks OK to you on your Eizo. I agree with the halo-like effect over the hills being an issue - out of interest, what is your preferred method of fixing this?
Thanks all for your feedback anyway. I'll have a go at a Mark 3 version and see what the crowd thinks.
