Mt. Ethel (with repost)

This last weekend I decided to go backpacking up into Mt Zirkel Wilderness Area. I ended up at Rainbow Lakes, after it raining the entire night before I woke up a bit late for sunrise to find a nearly cloudless sky and perfectly clear reflections. This was taken about 100 yards from where we camped.

Additionally if you are looking for some amazing fishing this is the place to be. nearly 50% of casts ended up with a bite.

C&C Appreciated.

Beautiful scene--but that lake looks awfully bright, might wanna pullback the highlites some.

Excellent composition and gorgeous light. Stan's right about the lake, though. The entire bottom 2/3 looks a little bit too bright.

Beautiful scene and light, very nicely composed. Darken the bottom 2/3 and this is a winner.

Ditto to what others have said regarding the lower portion, but bottom line, this is a beautiful shot, Jim. As I said elsewhere, it's shocking how still that lake is.

Ditto what the others are saying. Amazing reflections here!

Jim, years ago I had an instructor who was big on "point mergers." Had he seen your photograph he would have echoed everyone else on the brightness issue. He also would have suggested that the reflection of the mountains and the foreground rock run together. He would say to move up, left or right to avoid the point merger. Valid? Darned if I know. But I learned that way and still try to avoid those P-Ms. I would be interested in anyone else's thoughts on this.

Rod, I've heard and read about PM also. To be honest, I had not noticed that until you mentioned it. Don't know about the conditions in this shot but possibly moving a little to the right would have lined it up better...a very small nit IMO. Also, moving to the right may have changed the whole angle and not produced such a fine image as seen here.

Rod,
I have never thought much about point mergers, it is definitely something that I am going to be looking for in the future. On this particular shot I was in an opening about 4 feet wide with thick trees on both sides. Thanks for the feedback.

Jim, I think with the rework that people talk about will make this a killer shot. Thanks for sharing.

I had the exact thought as Rod regarding the point mergers. A step forward, and a couple to the right would have solved that, but I understand about the trees. Fix the brightness issues and you'll have a really nice shot.
BTW Jim, were you using a GND here? The reflection being brighter than the main subject doesn't make sense to me unless you were using too strong a grad.

I think this comp is great; nice exposure too.

Keep in mind that reflections in water are usually around -1 stop less than the subject itself. Thus, this image seems odd, in that the bottom part is brighter than the top.

In LR, you could use a brush to darken parts of the water to make them look more like the top

Also, maybe a slight CCW rotation?

These are all minor nits. I think you've done a really nice job on this image.

Thank you all for your C&C I think that most of the problems with my first post were caused by me doing too much in LR not the correct way. After starting over with the image in LR this is what I ended up with.

So the mountains aren't quite as dark as they were supposed to be so sorry here is one more shot.

Nice image. Like the color and the reflection. The repost does look better.