(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Patricia, this a very elegant composition, I love how you worked this lone tree into the landscape. The amount of spacing you have given to the mountains looks perfect. And I like the slight tilt in the birch as well. Looks like it was worth enduring that 45 degree cold and rain after all 
This is a really nice image, and worth trying some processing tweaks to take it up another notch (no pun intended). The exposure on the tree and sky look fine to me, but to my taste the mountains look underexposed. Because of the tree, this is a situation where a grad ND filter would not work, it would darken the tree as well as the sky. If you have another exposure bracket that has more exposure, you could try manually blending the mountain in as a separate layer. The last resort would be to simply dodge the mountains. If you know how to use luminosity masks, you could lift exposure in the darks only.
It is well worth the processing effort to try to get some more exposure on the mountains, this is a very neat view of Crawford Notch.
A very beautiful composition, Patricia. I cannot think this tree could have been photogarphed from a better viewpoint. I have some sympathy with Ed’s comment on the mountains ( at first I thought this was in b&w, which could be an interesting option to try as the high contrast would for me work better that way ). The distant layer and the misty light are beautifully handled.
Patricia, I like this image alot! You came away with a wonderful composition that makes this a pleasure to view. I could see the tree on the right edge a bit brighter but enjoying it very much as is.
I find this to be a fairly arts image. Artistic in the sense that the tree doesn’t look integrated with the rest of the image. It looks almost overimposed on the rest of the landscape. This visual isolation makes the image intriguing. Nice job.
Patricia,
This is quite unique and quite wonderful. Along the lines of Igor’s response, and I mean this in the nicest of ways - the tree sticks out like a sore thumb… or so the saying goes. And again I mean that in a unique way. The light/white trunk and the lovely tree just leafing out… all standing against a very moody, kind of dark background an misty/storm skies. I’m really enjoying this.
The only suggestion I have would be to crop off the very dark pine on the right. It’s not really adding anything and subtly detracts (good thing it’s real dark though.) I think, the comp and the impact of this setup can withstand the crop, but not completely sure.
Great eye to spot and recognize the potential here.
Lon
Hi Patricia,
Overall, I like this image. I do think the right side of the foreground feels a bit dark, and I’m not a huge fan of how much the mountainside runs against the top edge of the frame in the upper right corner; perhaps pull in the crop on the right side a bit?
The first thing I noticed, however, are the little branches that cross over the distant horizon line and span between the bottom branch and the next main one above. I’ve circled the ones to which I’m referring, although I think the lower right darker branches could go, too (read on as to why). I think cloning those out will help give a cleaner feel to that area of the photo and help the tree stand out from those darker shades behind it. It would provide a cleaner contrast to the white trunk against the green foliage and then the really interesting and darker branch structure would be isolated to the lighter background, providing a nice split.
Looking at the right side of the frame a bit more closely, I think I may try a square, or nearly square, crop and get rid of the pine branches that are imposing from off-frame and the other tree, which looks almost black.
All that is not to say I don’t love this shot, though! I really love the starkness of the white trunk against the green foliage.
