Independence Canyon

Moisture began streaming up into Arizona over the Fourth of July weekend, giving hope for sunsets, rainbows, lightning. June was blessed with blue skies, so the start of the "monsoon" season was welcome. To me it seems the quandary is to have the sunrise/sunsetcolor in the clouds and no direct light on the land, or have light on the terra and color gone from the sky. As always, your critique and suggestions are welcome.

Here is the same vantage a few minutes later. In between shots, I had tried some sunstars at f/22 and forgot to change the aperture back . Hence this may be a little soft at f/22.

I prefer #1, but keep both.

Of course, with the simple horizon, you could easily composite the sky from #1 with the foreground from #2.
That's not something I would do for my own work. Changing out skies crosses my personal line on processing.
How do the rest of you feel, in this particular situation, where the exposures are just a few minutes apart?

Do you have any later exposures after sunset? I love the twilight pastels in the Grand Canyon.

They're both great, but the sky in #1 makes it a winner.

Another vote for #1 here, Doug. I like the color on the clouds and the warmer colors overall. Nice shot!

Bill, I do have some exposures a little earlier before sunrise where the clouds have no color and there is only the soft light of dawn in the canyon. The second image is the last one I took from there that morning before the warm light disappeared and the sun hit the cloud directly blowing it out. I do not think combining the two for both cloud and canyon color would be realistic with both the sun into the canyon and sunrise/sunset colors on the clouds at the same time.
Bob and Joshua, thanks for the feedback. Do you think brightening the canyon would help some in #1?

I like #1, the colors in the sky help the eye move back through the image while in #2 my eye stayed down in the lower half of the image. I don't think brightening would help, it looks realistic now and I'm afraid it would come out looking to bright.

Doug, it's certainly worth it to give brightening the canyon a bit... A little bump on the "shadow" slider maybe?

I did end up selecting and brightening the canyon just a point. Again, thanks for the helpful feedback.