Afterglow

The sweet light was gone from the landscape, but there was still a nice afterglow on the mountains. I am anticipating comments about the trees being cut off, but my reasoning is as follows. The main focus of the image is the clouds and mountains. Here on the east coast we do not have the high, soaring majestic peaks. Any wider of a focal length to include more trees reduces the mountains to looking like molehills.
I think the trees would probably look better if they ran straight across the image instead of sloping to the right.

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What artistic feedback would you like if any?

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Good anticipation! :smiley: That is exactly what I was thinking upon opening this up. Really nice sky and depth, but doing a scroll, I prefer the tree tops cropped out.

This looks like it was one heck of a sunset, those clouds are gorgeous. Your image looks like it was taken later than your brothers, the sweet light in the clouds must have gone on a long time :grin:

As you know, like you I have shot at this location many times, because it has one the few big open sunset views in the White Mountains. Regarding your image, I agree with you and Harley, I’d like to crop away the cut-off trees at the very bottom. Yet, @Ed_Lowe got comments on his relatively similar shot asking to see more of the trees at the bottom. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, I guess.

It is a great location, but how one handles the trees here can get tricky. @Alan_Kreyger and I shot at this location 3 nights after you did , and the ones I liked best were telephoto shots that made the distant mid-ground more prominent by zooming in on it. Of course this narrowed the scope of view too, but it did make mountains bigger as you mentioned.

Oooh, those clouds are nice! You captured their colors perfectly. I have to agree on the very lowermost trees. I think they stand out because they are so deeply saturated. Maybe desaturating them a tad would make them blend in more.

Great Sky and foliage! It’s definitely more difficult to try to isolate the mountains from the trees here on the east coast. I was having this same problem trying to include peaks but no foreground trees during my trips up to VT in October. My suggestion for the bottom trees would be to slightly crop them a bit more getting rid of the ones in the lower left corner and then trying to get creative with the spot healing and clone stamp tools for the left overs.

I guess I think of this primarily as a cloudscape, Michael - the low lying autumnal trees simply a frame for the distant hills and sky. As such, I quite like the tonal and colour contrast the trees offer to the delicate pastels above. A lovely image !

Michael,

Gorgeous sky and I think your focal length choice worked nicely with respect to giving the mountains their due size. I’m with Harley on the bottom trees and yes, you predicted it. Between you and your brother, the presence of the autumn trees at the bottom keep shrinking… might as well be just keep going… for me anyway, it’s the case, “if you’re going to include something, include it with purpose.” But that’s just my thinking.

You’ve got a beautiful sky and image regardless.

Lon