Rocky Mountain National Park, CO

[John Holbrook]

 

[Jim Dockery]

Nice scene, but the sky is too dark for the lower part of the picture for my taste - doesn't look realistic. This is a tough shot to expose for, esp. with the moon which would blow out if you want the landscape to have much detail in a single exposure. Bracketing and then very selective masking and blending to get it right would be needed.

 

[John Holbrook]

Matrix-metered RAW image that is almost SOOC. I did burn/darken the small “pond” near the edge of the bottom frame. I agree the center of the meadow could be a little less prominent. Thank you for your observations.

 

[Ken Rennie]

Firstly nice image with great depth. John it looks as though you have used a soft ND grad ( I think that N Americans call them split ND filters) on the upper sky either real or in pp. Cropping just above the moon and it looks perfectly realistic. I am not suggesting that you crop just lighten the blues at the top. I would like to see a little more at the bottom epecially the base of the little bush in the middle but I suppose it isn't possible. Ken

 

[John Holbrook]

No ND filter used, split or gradient or in PP. As I’ve stated above the RAW file was pretty much SOOC with just the nominal optical lens corrections in LR, etc. No luminosity masking either. Yes, I regret the “missing” foreground and if I had a do-over I would frame the scene differently. I think my main “focus” (ha!) was the moon at the time of capture and I’m usually much better at my edges. Oh well.

 

[Jim Dockery]

Thanks for the conversation John. Interesting sky that evening, I would have shot it too, likely with similar results. I could have sworn you used a GND of some kind, but just goes to shows the variety in nature.

 

[Timmeh]

Hi John,

The light looks fine to me, and while the mountains balance each other other out (peaks on the right and the left), the visual weight of this is very heavy on the right. The clouds feed from the right and don't make it to the left and the foreground trees are dense on the right. My suggestion would be to crop to the edge of the 4 midground trees.

Tim

 

[Zeph]

Lovely Image... The twilight blue cast is always a judgement call, when you're there in person, the world is blue.
Love the contrasty warm colors...

 

[Bob Denton]

This is great.

 

[JimFox]

Hey John, I have been busy up here in the Tetons so it’s been hard to keep up. I know where your shot this, I think you did goood.