My Dallas Divide + repost + repost

The iconic Dallas Divide, CO taken last Sept. Since it was my first venture in photographing the area, it will remain a very memorable trip for some time to come.
The image is a two image blend to capture the tonal range.
Considering there were approximately 45 other photographers there, this wasn't much of a "wilderness" experience

Looks a bit tilted, Ken...but a real pretty scene!

It is a pretty scene. The two image blend looks a little off. The clouds seem unnaturally dark, the sky seems to get too dark towards the top, and there's a bit of a halo above the mountains. I think I'd try to see if you can process this as a single image.

Thank so much for the comments. I have a few other exposures of this particular image that I will try to work with. I really had to edit heavily on this image due primarily to the ever present smoke last fall. I could have lived with a bluish smoke, but because of the low sunlight, it was an ugly brownish color.
Always useful to have a fresh set of eyes to evaluate, thanks...

The tilt is unusual, though it probably works for me. Not bad for a first trip there . I like the variegated colors of the foreground! The sky is where the blend may be a little bit off, there appears to be burn marks around some clouds and slight halos around the peaks. Maybe adding a layer of blue gradient at low opacity might even things out. Beautiful image to work with and well worth it though!

I think you captured a great foreground here, but agree that the skies look a bit off.
I hope you get those skies a bit more under control, becuae this is a pretty marvelous scene!

All looks nice sans the sky, which looks HDR-ish to me in terms of the unevenness & splotchiness of the blue, and dark brown clouds.

With a few more images of this scene, I processed it again taking into account the comments and some other issues I noticed. And yes, the skies on the first image really sucked due to excessive processing. I must have had too much eggnog I appreciated the honest critiques as they were all dead-on.
Have to admit my d7000 really struggled with this scene, more than most. I still find it quite frustrating modern camera technology still can't capture a wide exposure range better. For those of you using high end DLSRs, are scenes like this also difficult to capture well?

I think this is better. The sky looks more real, and you are capturing the alpenglow on the peaks.

The D7000 sensor is about as good as they come in terms of dynamic range. Very malleable images. Are you saying that you have pushed up the sliders so far that you color noise in the shadows has become a problem? You certainly can't see any noise at this image size. I'll bet you could push things rather farther than you think. Even if you pushed into some luminance noise, at 1-2 pixel size this just adds texture which is quite inoffensive.

On slide film like Velvia you would have needed to use an ND grad. Lightroom lets you apply an ND grad filter.

Just for education purposes, try changing to Black and White and see if you can make a nice image from the same scene.

Interesting comment Tom in regards to the D7000 sensor. No doubt it is better than earlier versions of Nikon's crop sensor offerings. And yes, when I pushed the shadows slider in Aperture, I did get a distasteful result on this particular image. Based on your comment, it could be Aperture's inability with RAW processing that is my frustration. That said, I have pushed other images without too much issue. Just out of curiosity, I may download a trial version of DXO Optics Pro to see what it does.
Yea, I do have the ability to use a ND filter via Nik plugins, but normally I only use one of the ND filters if I have relatively straight horizon. There are ways to make that work with Nik's plugins with some creativity. No doubt I was trying to save this particular image, based on the horrible smoke in the air. Normally, I would have deleted it. But the foreground color kept it around.
Thanks for the comments...gave me some things to contemplate.

The skies look much better here, Ken. But the foreground foliage lost it's 'pop', in particular the yellows of the aspens center left.
If you can make those autumn colors 'pop' a bit more, you'll have a real winner here, IMO.

This version is really close to how I remember the scene. Still a two image blend; one for foreground and the other the sky and mountains. Took Tom's advice and utilized a ND filter via Nik plugins for the sky and mountains. Have to say that was the ticket to getting the exposure in check and maintaining details as shot without creating halos and other artifacts. I did notice I lost some effect of the soft alpenglow on the right peak which I need to figure out. Probably too much contrast used in that area.

Ken, I think with the latest revision that you took a step backwards. Starting with the first revision, you may want to add some image polish of 10/50/0 USM for the local contrast to help the trees stand out, and add just a tiny amount of blue or cyan into the "blue" portion of the sky (as it seems a little yellowish to me- you mentioned smoke).

Ooops. Posted the wrong version. This curves/levels adjustment image addressed that brownish color tinge.