My brother and I had to drag a 500 lb picnic table about 30’ to get this shot. There were some intruding fg bushes that we had to get above and we needed the table to stand on. It was rocking back and forth so we had to stand perfectly still while exposing.
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Definitely worth the drag Michael. This image is gorgeous! I love the composition and of course the colors.
A classic White Mountains scene, captured in peak fall color. This reminds me of the Smokies to some degree too. I love the crisscrossing diagonal lines, it creates a very graphic image. The processing of color is perfect here too.
Since the New Hampshire State Park service doesn’t seem too interested in keeping this viewpoint cleared away, I’ll share a tip that will help you avoid dragging 500 lb picnic tables. If you walk from the parking area to the road, and take the paved sidewalk partway down to Silver Cascade, you end up with more or less the same view of the Notch, but with none of the foreground obstructions.
Thanks @Carol_Nichols and @Ed_McGuirk. Thanks for the tip, Ed. I’ll put that in my notes for future trips.
Real nice lines and color. Getting picky, I might tone down the bright red tree on the right edge, it pulls me a bit out of the frame. Otherwise, processing looks good.
Thanks @Harley_Goldman. I agree about the tree. Just left it to see if others noted it.
Michael,
As mentioned, you really hit the peak color! The diagonal and graphic nature of the composition works beautifully; I think you’ve framed and presented this perfectly. The fore, mid and back-grounds are balanced nicely and the eye is drawn in to the scene nicely and with plenty of interest to come back and explore the image front to back - a number of times!
Very, very minor suggestion. You might clone/crop the very small yellow tips along the bottom edge, mostly the leaf tips in front of the evergreen right of center; and perhaps to a lesser extent, the little fragments of color along the bottom left edge. Very minor.
The biggest and most important question for you and Ed… did you move the picnic table back? Not used to this. Here is California, they tie down the 200lb tables with heavy duty chains… 
Lon
Thanks @Lon_Overacker. If this table only weighed 200 lbs it probably would have been secured. But believe me, as heavy as this was it was probably not worth the effort to steal or vandalize. 
We just left it there. The location seemed just as good.
Mike,
Dang that table was heavy! 
This was worth the extra effort though IMO. The diagonals from this view are wonderful and impart a nice sense of depth to the scene. Of course the bold autumn color is the icing on the cake. @Ed_McGuirk good to know, will remember that next time. @Lon_Overacker we decided to leave it there as the view was much nicer where we left it. 
Beautiful layered scene, Michael. Worth the effort to get the clean composition. Two suggestions: the white balance looks a bit too warm to my eye - I would experiment with cooling down a touch to provide more color separation. The farthest hillside looks a little bright and I would suggest taking the exposure down a bit. Anyway a fine fall image.
