Hi Will, I really like the moody feel of this image. I like the play of warm light on the mountain that contrasts with the snow and clouds. I am wondering if the foreground hills are a bit on the blue side and how they would look with a little warming up. Great image.
You got lucky with the clouds for sure. I like the stretch of mountain across, but not sure you need as much of the bottom as you have included. It has a heavy cyan cast and just doesn’t add much to the drama you want to convey. Did you consider a more panoramic crop for this? I bet that would do a lot for your concept. Also might consider easing back on the sky contrast as it seem a bit overdone. Great potential here. I’ve only visited RMNP once and that was in the 90s. Looks like I need to go back!
@claudia1 Thank you for your comments. The clouds were such that the top half of the image was receiving direct, and somewhat warm, sunlight, but the bottom was in shadow, and much cooler in tone. So the original image was accurate to the scene. But, based on your suggestion, I tried warming up the bottom (by quite a lot +20 pts) and I do think it harmonizes the top and bottom much better. I’ve posted the modified version.
@Kris_Smith The clouds were impressive that day. But you know what they say: bad weather makes good photos. We visited RMNP during the first half of June this year, and the weather was unusually cold and wet. We spent one day in which we hiked in the rain for four hours. A week later, after we left, the weather was much warmer with no rain. But probably much worse photo opportunities!
I had previously tried a version of this image in which I cut a lot of the bottom part of the mountain. But I found that if I cut out the bottom I also needed to crop out an equivalent amount of the sky, or else it felt unbalanced. Cutting out a lot of the sky made the image much less interesting. Also, as to the sky, all I did in the processing was to lower the brightness 1/3 stop. That is really the sky that was there.
