Jan. 27, 2008 - Early Light, Spring Mountains

Canon 5D, 70 - 200mm f/2.8L IS with 2X converter @ 400 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 sec., ISO 400

For those not familiar with the area, the Spring Mountains lie just to the west of the Las Vegas valley and define it's wesern boundary. Red Rock Canyon is at the base of these mountains and would be north (to the right) of the mountains seen here. This picture was taken just after the sun broke the eastern horizon, the morning after a light snowfall in the western hills (down to about 3,500 ft.).

I took this standing in front of my house. It's not that I have a "great" view, though. Looking west, there's a high wall at the end of my street and some serious power lines run north and south just beyond the wall. In essence, I framed this above the wall and below the power lines - something you can do with focal lengths of 400 mm and above. While I personally don't like changing the content of an image after the fact (in Photoshop, for example), I have no problem, apparently, with in-camera manipulations. Both forms, I guess, are somewhat deceitful, but at least this is no more and no less what the lens "saw". Adding a visible moon for example - it was, in fact, just out of the top of the frame, behind the clouds - would be wrong in my mind. That is, unless you clearly indicated that it wasn't really there. But consciously excluding walls and power lines before snapping the shutter is, I think, OK.

Simply my opinion...........I'm not trying to sell anybody anything.