Estes Park Welcome Sign, Colorado, United States

[Dave Spates]

Nikon D3100; Tokina 11-16mm 2.8 shot @11mm
1/30 sec; f/7.1; ISO 100 HH, Sunrise
This image is not cropped, removed glare from tree in photoshop, minor levels and curves adjustment
Not very experienced with landscapes especially sunrise/sunset so I took a crap load of pictures @ different exposures and such
and this one looked the best. Thanks for looking.

[Don Railton]

Hi Dave. I have a feeling this is not level as the words on the rock are not level, and would expect that they are... The second thing is that I think the sky is over exposed while the fg looks about right or maybe slightly dark. I would be tempted to pull back that sky somewhat. Finally I want to run over past that sign to check out the scenery...and I can't..! The image looks very sharp with good colour.

Don


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[Don Railton]

Hello again Dave..

I went and opened this up in PS on my desktop for a second look and you I think need about 3.5 degrees counter clockwise rotation... I should have also mentioned that if you have other images from this position you may be able to combine/blend them into one image. The problem you have is that you are looking directly into the sun and that means a lot of shadow (=no details..) facing you on of the side of the trees etc that you are photographing. So if you take one image that is exposed correctly for the shadows and combine that with another image that is exposed correctly for the sky you can end up with an image that has a lot more detail without the washed out colour or blocked up shadows that are the norm with images shot into the sun like this... I have adjusted the level on this image and put a small gradient on the sky to pull it back a little but its difficult to do much more with the limited data in the images posted.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hi Dave. Don hit it on the head here. Nice scene and good juxtaposition of the sign and the sunstar, but the sky needs to have more detail recovered.
Since you said you took different exposures, I'd try to blend back a darker exposure for sky detail. If you are unsure how to do it, you are most welcome to send me the RAW files of 3 exposures about 1-2 stops apart? :S3:

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Dave, ditto on Don's critique and Morkel's suggestion to blend in some sky from your alternate exposures to eliminate the toasted sections of the sky. Look forward to seeing a repost if you try the above suggestions.

[Diane Miller]

It might be possible to process the original raw to recover the blown highlights in the sky. I like the tonalities in the FG.