Paradise Valley sunrise

Yes, this may well constitute cheating, since this 4 shot horizontal pano was taken from the deck of our Montana home in early June. The colors “as shot” would have made a great “velvet elvis” print without needing the black light. I made large white balance changes before they started to look realistic and I’m still not sure that they’re not over the top. I will also say that setting up a pano is much easier with the tripod on a level deck.

5D3, 24- 105 IS II @ 70 mm, 2.5 s, f/16, iso 200, tripod

You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.

Beautiful sky and scene. To my eye, the colors do look a little over the top, but not hideously so. Very enjoyable.

Very nice pano. The large version opens up the foreground nicely. To me, the colors a re close to being over the top, but they do wok. That’s a great sky. Nice spot to hang out, too!
-P

Incredible view! (not over the top) When can we visit?

A gorgeous sunset panorama, Mark! It actually looks very natural to me and you did a great job of retaining the visibility and detail in everything else that isn’t sunset! btw, I rarely use a tripod for panoramas anymore. Unless it requires a long exposure I just set the exposure and shoot the frames handheld using visual clues to make sure I get enough overlap. I can shoot a 7 - 10 frame panorama in 15 - 30 seconds. Then I use AutoPanoGiga to stitch them. It takes care of any differences in angle and does a seamless stitch in seconds.

Nature’s over-the-top sunsets are the ones you never forget. Montana has some big skies - lived in Great Falls in our AF days. This is a great example of those big skies. Perhaps you should have a meet-up here :wink:

Marvellous control of the high contrast, Mark - the details of the landscape come through just enough so that one feels the cool of the early morning.