Having read the contest tips more closely, I'll offer the following about this photo. The photo was taken as the last rays of the sun were illuminating the peaks of the ridges. The warm light on those ridges combined with the red rocks of Bryce Canyon drove the saturation through the roof. Even though I had bracketed exposures and tried to use HDR to compress the tonal range, I couldn't do anything that didn't result in a gaudy color image.
I hated to let this one go because I liked the ruggegness portrayed by the roots and twisted trunk of the Bristlecone Pine and the Bryce hoodoos.
As a last ditch effort I decided to convert the HDR image to B&W. I still had to tone down the illuminated peaks and I painted some brightness along the tops of the roots in Lightroom to draw extra attention. In the end this has become my favorite picture from Bryce Canyon. After a few days there I was overloaded on red hoodoos and the B&W version retained what I really like about the Bryce area, which is the ruggegness. The fact that people carved out an existence here is quite amazing to me.
Any critique will be welcomed.
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