Dusting off the South Sister

Here's an image I took last Labor Day on a camping trip to Sparks Lake. Despite a horribly bright and bland sky, the weather on the trip was nice.
I was trying frame the mountain with a minimal foreground with the greens of the brush, and capture the soft side lighting on the mountain as the sunset.
Zack helped me out with some blending techniques and here's my best attempt at evening out the sky while maintaining the beautiful light that made the mountain glow.

3 exposure hand blended, with localized levels in PS CS3

Canon 20d
24-105 L IS @ 24mm
Polarizer, 2 Stop GND soft
ISO 100
f/16
1.3 sec
-1 EV

The sky color is nice for being so clear.. looks like the processing turned out well... I kind of like it cropped with a little off the bottom...

Nicely composed image. The foreground compliments the mountain very well. Beautiful light on the mountain. Well captured and processed.

You did a good job on the processing on this one, I think you made the most of the conditions you had to work with. For some reason this image it showing up darker than the one you emailed me.

Nice shot, but for my taste I would completely crop out the rough volcanic stones in the FG. They are sharp-edged and give me a different feeling than the smooth contours of almost everything else in the image.

The foreground works for me, although if you could have crossed and set up in the vegetation on the far side that would have been interesting to compare. The sky does beg for a little drama to match the mountain.

It's very plain and spare but I really like it, Chris. I'd like a little more separation from that rock and the edge on the left though. I'd go so far as to clone out a bit of rock to get it. It would "seal" the comp a bit more, you would give the feeling of a more complete, self sustaining comp.

thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to give this one another try from scratch, and will take these into consideration. As far as the jagged rocks, I feel like that's the beauty of this place......the contrast of sharp elements to the soft grass meadow when the water is low.
Unfortunately, I'll never get a gorgeous sky out of it:)

The image is balanced effectively by the two groups of rocks. The trees off-center positioning is perfect and the mountain stands as clearly the center of interest; this is heightened by the touch of light gracing it. The wavy lines of the sand and grass draw my eye.

I would consider adjusting the white balance a bit to add some warmth, dominantly in the foreground.