Untitled + Repost

Took a trip on Saturday evening to make it up to the Grand Canyon by sunrise with some time to work on night photography with a buddy of mine. The clouds barely made it over the south rim as the sun rose leaving no dramatic light to photograph. Decided it was best to head back towards PHX taking a detour through Oak Creek Canyon and Sedona to see how the leaves were doing. It was interesting to see the transition from the higher elevations and the leafless trees. We still had about 4 hours until sunset, but couldn't decide on where to shoot around there. So, one last location came into my mind which was Watson lake in Prescott. I've only been there once in the summer, but have seen a handful of images from there in the fall as there are colorful trees around the lake. Finally got to the lake and tried to scout out some compositions. It was quite busy on the water with kayakers and fishermen as well as those just hanging out on the rocks surrounding the shores. Anyways, the clouds began to break up leaving wonderful gaps to the west for the sky to explode. Right on cue, the sky danced with beautiful orange and red light. I was at the top of one of the rocks overlooking the lake and looked behind me to see this web of red sky. I saw my buddy down on the lakeshore shooting towards me and remembered a composition with a golden tree against the granite rocks. I ran down there as fast as possible to capture what I could and ended up getting a few shots I liked from this spot. My friend captured a similar scene which he thought wasn't that great, but it's probably better then my version. As always, comments and critiques are appreciated.

Blend of two exposures for dynamic range

Canon 7d
Canon 17-40mm @17mm
ISO 100
f14
1.3 sec exposure/ 5 sec exposure
Tripod