I had an amazing sunrise the morning I shot this. My dog woke me up at about 6:45 am. The sky was red in the east and the clouds were pink and fluffy. I put the dog in the house and packed up my stuff and drove out of the city.
As I headed towards the mountains I saw the pink glow on the snowcapped peaks. Magical! But where to shoot from? Everywhere I went there was something that spoiled the shot whether it was power lines or something else that just didn't fit.
As I got west of Cochrane the light changed. The pinks and reds disappeared and were replaced by drab grays. I drove for a few minutes more hoping for a break in the clouds but it didn't happen. I drove back towards town and saw this place as a possibility at 8:23 am. Nice but not nearly as great as what I missed shooting....
I used my Galen Rowell Soft grad filter to hold back the sky a bit. Yes, that's pretty old school and you could use HDR to do the same thing but a) this is a basic editing challenge b) I like to do that sort of thing in camera if I can.
Processing:
Levels, saturation and clarity adjustment in LR2. Export to TIFF and resized and sharpened in PSP X2
Oh...and what to do with that friggin' fencepost? I wanted the gate in the shot and framing it without the post looked weird. Oh well...
Post challenge:
2nd straight 13th place finish? Weird....
Statistics
Place: 13 out of 96 Avg (all users): 6.3783 Avg (commenters): 7.2500 Avg (participants): 6.1667 Avg (non-participants): 6.4341 Views since voting: 1268 Views during voting: 374 Votes: 230 Comments: 9 Favorites: 0
First Impressions:
There is no way to tell you what my first impression was when I saw this photo. It is just awesome! All I could do was stare.
Technical (Comp, lighting, color, focus):
Don't you hate it when you miss lighting? Especially lighting you KNOW is gonna make the perfect shot. But WOW you ended up with this! The sky doesn't look drab at all. I'm gonna have to check into some filters ;-)
Challenge:
Beautiful country side image; I'd say you met the challenge.
Artistic/Emotion:
Very artistic photo. You captured perfect fall colors. Of course you had to leave the fence post in the shot! The fence is a wonderful leading line. Heck the colors of the foloiage even lead you into the picture. I love the way the fall colors play against that blue sky.
This photo just has all that is fall - makes me want to saddle up and go for a ride. And that looks like the perfect place for a ride.
Summary:
How do I summarize this? It's just a beautiful image. Simply perfect! :-)
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