Rescued from my hard drive.....(revised)

I was just rummaging around in my hard drive and came across this shot from the fall of '06 that I somehow managed to overlook. It was just prior to sunrise and I just like the soft pastel colors of the clouds. I remember that morning I headed up to Boulder early and I was setting up the tripod in the dark and realized that I left the QR plate to my tripod at home. So, for this shot I had to bump the ISO to 800 and shoot at f 5.6. I think I just assumed that they would all be rubbish, but this one is growing on me!

There is a vibrant palette in this shot Paul. It works nicely as is, but also as a square or maybe 5X4 crop keeping all of the right side.

I agree with Mel. You also might want to play a bit with the curves to get more contrast in the sky.

Check your red saturation level - might be a tad high (judging from what appears to be posterized clouds). Then, like was suggested above, crop out the right "negative space". Otherwise, nice composition.

Ken

Overall, a very pleasing shot, Paul. Not sure if the color balance could use some tweaking - the reds look okay to me, but the foliage in the foreground looks warmer than normal. I've seen that funky light many times, so maybe that's it, but I'm not sure.

I've stood in that gully and tried to get it to work as a lead-in; the challenge is that the scrub is typically so "messy" that it usually ends up competing with the Flatirons. I think it works reasonably well here. I would probably clone out that orphan rock though.

I like this little scene you've resurrected Paul. The extreme warm color temp is destroying your sky. The suggestions that have already been made would be mine as well.

Pam

Thanks for the suggestions! I adjusted the white balance -- it was off. I checked the saturation levels to make sure I wasn't going over the top and tried the crop and cloning suggestions. Hopefully theses are better?

And a crop....thanks again for the helpful suggestions