Here is the shot from years ago when I went for climbing trip to Red Rocks Nevada. At this moment I didn't have any clue about my first DSLR and even photography at all......
Returned back to old Jpeg files and try to test my new CS6 and updated detail 3 plugin , really would like to know what you are thinking about my one of the first landscape shots,,,,,
Note: didn't play with saturation at all ....!
Canon 30D, ISO 100, 40mm, 0 ev, F/7.1, 1/125, single shot, handheld......

Comments
4 commentsAnd the composition has the older up front, baking in the sun with the younger, sharper mountains in the background; sharper for the moment; challenging those same clouds. And I think we know who will win in the long term.
This flows, for me, from the left to the right and then back to the left again. Great range of colors and forms, absorbing the senses and the mind.
A few things technically I would suggest to you are that first I have, looking at the larger view, a sense of a bit of softness in the foreground. I am wondering if you were cognizant of the hyperfocal distance in this. At 1/125, there can still be some little issues handheld. So that is one thing, a very minor thing given the magnitude of this amazing image; something that would easily be overlooked unless, perhaps, it were blown up to 20 X 30 inches.
The other thing is that to me the horizon feels like it runs uphill a bit towards the right. This is not to make an empirical statement, because the image is perfectly plausible just as it is as a record of what was there plumb accurate. I'm just saying that I note in my mental impression that feeling. When I analyze it, I find that almost everthing contributes to it; the foreground rocks, the intermediate meadow on the left, the further mountains behind that, and even the clouds.
So I would think about how it might look with maybe a 2-4 degree rotation clockwise.
But to recap, the layers here of foreground rounded rock, then the meadow, then the rocky mountains, then the clouds, and the colors, and the orientation you framed, I find all of this to be an extradinorary result.
Excellent oldie man