Warm Springs Burn w/ Jefferson

This is one of my favorite places in Oregon. I shot this from the side of Hwy 26 without a tripod (yeah, there where the shoulder is narrow and the drop to the meadow of red-twig is 15 feet)

I had some other challenges (racing the cloud to the viewpoint, very high dynamic range and no safe place to set up a tripod to do hdr).

This was processed in LR and Nik's Viveza (the latter for selective adjustments). My real question is this: Did I go too far with bringing down the sky and saturating the layers of color? The clouds were close to being blown in the raw file.

I think you did a great job with the shot and processing in viveza. The sky might be just a small tad too blue, but with all the other colors being so vibrant I think I would leave it as is. I know the spot and this is an excellent capture, congratulations!

Bold and beautiful! just my opinion, of course, but I think the sky's color contrasts too much with fg colors. I might try to tone it down just a little bit. Given the conditions and challenges you describe, this is really great.

Thanks, Craig and Cathy. Here is a second attempt at balancing the sky. I really gotta join the network (not just the forum) so I can upload. There doesn't appear to be a way of connecting to an additional link, but here is where to find it. Copy and paste into the address bar to go to photobucket (and peruse more really screwed up fotos there).


http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n232/mldiggs/Landscapes/IMG7D-0918VivezaVivezaPanoVivWeb.jpg

Marylynne, I think I prefer the retry. The sky's more realistic. It might be worth it to try to tone down the white snow/clouds some...Viveza would help with that as well. I like the scene very much.