Grand Vistas

I took this a little over a year ago after my week of photography and learning about Photoshop at the Santa Fe Workshops. I stopped at the White Rock Overlook on my way from Santa Fe to Albuquerque via Bandelier National Monument...at least that was the plan. Some of those clouds turned into nasty thunderstorms and on the Albuquerque side of Bandelier a few things happened....the light got really good after the storm (photographically)...but the road got washed out on the outskirts of a town I was heading into for gas...and I was running on fumes. The nearest gas station was 30 or 40 miles away, back toward Santa Fe. My focus switched to a desperate search for gas, I got very few photos, and I ended up buying an emergency 2 gallons or so from a corner store in the middle of nowhere for what I figured later was $10/gallon. The guy felt guilty selling it to me and tried very hard to talk me out of it, but it's not like I was going to walk...

Although I took this photo with my favorite lens, a Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS, it sort of illustrates a problem more common to wide angle lenses and grand vistas....how do you "get it all in there" and keep the photo interesting at the same time? I like the clouds and the different colors across the landscape. The distance is implied with the haze and the rock formations. The only thing I feel this particular photo could use is some interesting subject matter in the foreground (harder to do with a telephoto). The photos I took there with a wide angle, with trees or rocks in the foreground, I don't really like. Anyway, some of you may find it boring (at least click on it and look at the larger version before reaching a verdict), but I kind of like it, especially because I know what happened next :)

Open Space - White Rock, New Mexico