Originally posted by acoufap A hard challenge, but interesting and maybe too much for this kind of thread!
Hope we won’t be killed.
What are yours? And what about a B&W treatment?
I prefer a sliver of sky to establish the horizon and sort of set the scene within a larger context. The first image was as taken, with extra sky that I usually include reflexively. The same image with more than half the sky cropped away is what I posted and what I like best. When I crop off all the sky, which is the last image, regrettably out of sequence (my error) it just does not look right to me. It looks "beheaded." The tops of the rock formations are too close to the top of the frame. For the images with the pickup & camper trailer at the upper left, eliminating the sky to me crowds that camper trailer against the top of the frame too much. I included it in the original framing purposely to give scale. The thing on the horizon I have the advantage of being able to enlarge. It's an isolated pinnacle structure similar to the "mittens" at Monument Valley. It's insignificant to the overall image, but when the sky-horizon is eliminated, it gets "beheaded" and consequently may attract more attention than intended or deserved.
If I'm fiddling on the other computer later I'll work on a B&W. I did convert several images from Utah to B&W, especially some in which the color was rather bland and looked too fake if I pushed up the saturation, and some of the scenics do look good/ better converted to B&W (IMHO) I kept most in color because it is "red rock country." I think the images of the Gooseneck Bends are overall too dark to work well in B&W. Even a tiny bit of color will enhance visual pickup of details down inside those canyons. I think a B&W will look too featureless and "flat."