Mt. Evans sunrise + re-edit link

Here's an HDR panorama from Monday morning. I've already spent quite a bit of time trying to clean up most of the sun spots splattered across the right side. Comments?

Not one mountain goat that morning, but I did finally get what I think is a nice shot of a ptarmigan.

Love the ptarmigan! I like the pano comp, but the HDR needs some work; the sky near the sun should not be darker than the sky on the far left side

It's gorgeous! I am always a sucker for panos. Do you have a WEB page? I'd love to see a larger version. Seriously, that looks really fantastic!

Russ
www.AlpineGalleria.com

Thanks again Stan for pointing out that wierd HDR pattern of reversing the lighting. I'll probably have to go back to square one and start over on that.

Russ, you can get to my web page by clicking on the www in my posts.

Jim, I agree with Stan on his keen eye, but LOVE the comp on the first one, is I hope to see a repost of it! I haven't seen a Ptarmigan on Mt Evans in 4 years now....and ANY shot of one is a winer my my book. In yours, I like how it shows the surrounding terrain and why this little ones are so hard to find...he looks just like another rock!

I like the HDR treatment of the land, but the sky is certainly a mess. I'd certainly keep working on it because it does have a lot of potential. You might consider doing a non-HDR pano of the properly exposed sky, and then blending that with an HDR pano of the foreground ??

I usually trip over the Ptarmigan before I see them. Very nice environmental portrait.

These other guys must have a better eye than me cuz I think this looks great. I'm gonna cruise to your web page to see if you have a larger version.

Another vote for the ptarmigan. Yup, the HDR needs some tweaking. Other than that, a nice comp.

I like the comp a lot. I don't know if it's the HDR treatment or slightly different exposure in the left frame. I have that problem when I do Pano's sometime. You can almost see a line at the top between the darker and the lighter.

I like it. Would like to see a larger version.

Well, I went back and just worked on the sky. I'm not 100% satisfied with the results, but I'll see how it looks when I print out a small sample first, before spending more hours on it.

Brian, a larger version of this revised version is already on my site in the Mt. Evans album.

I'm not seeing any difference between the two, but I sure do like the landscape portion of this panorama! Composition is excellent, and the colors are wonderful.
Rather than fussing for hours over the sky, why not just crop out as much as you can above the sunstar? This one is all about the land, IMO.
Any particular reason why you don't clone out the one flare spot near the sun?

John, Yes, the difference is subtle, where I lightened up the sky some on the right side and darkened the sky on the left, per Stan's wise suggestion. Without going back and forth between them, it's hard to see the difference. The problem with that flare is that it's right on one of the light beams coming off of the sun. I could try burning it down some, but I try to avoid doing things that look obviously altered. There are several other flares around the sun that are also in spots that are hard to remove. You just can't see them in this small version. I do have a question related to all of those flares: Would having a UV filter on the lens make the number of flares much worse? Maybe I should not be using it under these conditions?
Maybe I'm making things harder than I need to, but it's cropped this way for me to print it out as an 8x32, so that it will fit in a 12x36 frame. I don't want to lose anything from the sides. I also like the clouds in the top right. Actually, I'm not even that optimistic about printing it that large, because I'm afraid that the red light splatter below the sun across the rocks will look real bad.
However, I really do appreciate the feedback as it is giving me more to think about towards making this better.
Thanks to everyone for the feedback.

"Would having a UV filter on the lens make the number of flares much worse? Maybe I should not be using it under these conditions?

Absolutely! That's one more (unnecessary) piece of glass for the sun to create more flare. I would stop using it myself, esp. when pointing toward the sun.
One thing I learned at NPN to help me eliminate flare spots is to take another exposure of the scene with a finger (or some such) blocking out the sun, which eliminates flareing. Then you can place that exposure under the sunstar shot and using layer masking, simly 'erase' those areas with flare spots to reveal the corrected version underneath.

That is one nice pano, and I have seen 1 ptarmigan in 30 years of going up Mt. Evans, and nowhere else in the mountains at all, so you were lucky(and ready) with your fine shot.
I agree the sky still needs work, but also agree the comp is excellent.

I reprocessed the HDR files without the lowest exposed files and I think that the sky looks better, except that the area directly above the sun is now blown out. I was also able to remove (or burn-down) more of the flares. The rest of the image didn't seem to be affected by removing those files. Here's that version, if anyone is interested.
Thanks again for the suggestions.

That's much better, Jim.

As you noticed, you seem to have lost the sunstar above the sun. Could you mask that back in? I would be tempted to clone out the flare ball using the surrounding sky, then clone the ray back in. Also, maybe clone the sky into the brighter blue still surrounding the right edge of the left side clouds.

Nice ..

Nice ptarmigan. Really blends into the rocks.

I've completely re-edited that panorama and here's a link to the larger version. Hopefully, I've addressed well the several issues that were discussed. Thanks again for all of your advice.
http://go-2.it/2S4