Castlewood II

Another shot from my morning at Castlewood Canyon, this one from pre-dawn. It's a blend of two exposures, and I had fits with the treeline. Looks like a grad line, but am having no luck getting detail in it. Suggestions?

Comments and critiques always welcome, and thanks for looking,

Morris

Morris,
I really like this shot but doesn't quite look if the two exposures are in alignment. I may be wrong but looks a bit off to me.

Thanks, Klaus. I did use auto-align layers, so I don't know if it missed or not. Any others see a mis-alignment?

It's not mis-aligned...AutoAlign did it's job just fine.
There appears to be too much dynamic range present in the foreground for just one (foreground) shot to capture.
Due to underexposure, there's no info left in the dark treeline to rescue. Sorry...

Beautiful scene, that's one incredible sky. Since you can't get much more detail out of the trees, I'm wondering what this might look like if you instead darken the foreground a bit to make it look more natural, the snow would still be fairly bright, and if you kept those splashes of light on those boulders on the right and the creek in the middle it might turn out alright. Just sort of thinking out loud on that one....

I like the comp and light. The dark trees don't bother me at all, but the red cast does. Thanks for posting.

Nice comp. Is this just standing on the bridge on 83?

Yes, Brian, just on the bridge with trucks flying by at 60. No sidewalk, and just a white line shoulder. And it's not even a good enough shot to have risked all that.
Thanks John, Jeremy, and Momo also for your comments.

O.K., I took the advice and darkened the foreground and took out the red cast, so how is it now?

hmm that didn't turn out quit how I thought, I think maybe my main problem was the bright snow, I did some quick adjustments to it that might work better, I've sent you an email.

I like the second version better, but it looks like a difficult image to work with. Sorry I don't have any further suggestions to offer.