Sawtooth Light

Took these shots last night while hiking between the sawtooth ridge and Mt. Evans. I'm satisfied with the first picture, but the second one seems a bit dark (anyone agree?). I tried many techniques to try to capture both the rocks and the sunset (blending, HDR, etc.) and ended up going back to the original shot. I even used a graduated ND filter. Anyone have any advice for getting a good shot when the foreground has no light but the sunset is worthy? Any thoughts?

Shot #2, Too Dark?

Different shot with more light and weaker sunset. Better or worse?

These are very nice Scott. The first one is a little out of focus on the left side, but the lighting is good. I think trying to have too big of a dynamic range makes photos look unnatural (IMO). Of the two sunset shots, I prefer the lower one. I would warm it up though (it's a little too blue). Thanks for posting.

Scott, don't get too hung up on the darkness in the scene in #2 and #3. There's definitely detail there, and it adequately represents what was happening. Maybe try the shadow/highlight feature on Photoshop CS (on a background copy layer). But really, I think they both look outstanding. I disagree with Momo about toning down the blue. Again, it's what the scene is, and accurately portrays the coldness of the shadows high above timberline.

As for the first one, that is an awesome take! Seems like in the heat of battle, I always fail to see compositions like this. Glad you don't suffer the same shortcomings.

Did you climb Bierstadt and then do the traverse to Evans, or were you hiking down from the Evans summit towards the Sawtooth Ridge for photos?

Thanks for the repsonse, Todd. I was pretty bummed when I found out that the left-side of the first shot was out of focus. I set up camera to focus using all focus points but it didn't work. That shot was handheld (no room for tripod). How does one keep everything in focus at 20mm with both close and far objects? In response to your comments: I'm very familiar with PS highlights/shadows. They usually do the trick, but not with that great of a dynamic range (at least with respect to keeping it looking natural). I was hiking with my wife from Evans to the sawtooth for the sake of hiking and photos. I left Denver when it was 90 degrees. Two hours later I was freezing and looking for a nook to avoid the wind. That's where I found my shot. I also like the blue cast of the last two shots because it was natural. I even lowered the saturation of blue quite a bit when processing. My concerns with the darkness is that I lost alot of detail. Even with a 5D, these shtos don't look to good behond 12x18 (too much noise, etc).

When you have the dark tundra and the medium-blue shadowy snow juxtaposed like that, I think that provides enough detail in the shadows. As for keeping everything in focus, I don't have the calculation in front of me, but at 20mm, you should be able to focus something like 2-3 feet in front of you, stop the lens down to f22 and have everything from less than a foot to infinity in focus. Perhaps you didn't realize it, but inadvertantly focused on something closer to infinity than anything in the foreground.

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

If you follow the link above (a handy one to bookmark, btw), you can use the online depth of field calculator to see that, if you focus a 20mm lens @ f22 on a subject that's just two feet away, you'll have acceptable sharpness from one foot to infinity. Seems to me that would incorporate everything in the field of view in your first shot, or near enough that it would be only slightly OOF on the left. I think you must've focused way past these rocks..