Sunset on the Maluti Mountains

[Morkel Erasmus]

An image from our trip in April to the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in the Maluti Mountains, part of the greater Drakensberg Mountain Range in South Africa.

This area is famed for its sandstone cliffs, some of which are visible in this image.

Techs:
Canon 7D with 10-22mm USM @ 10mm
f16 @ ISO-100
Kenko Pro Circular Polariser used
A blend of 3 images using luminosity masks

[Robert Amoruso]

Morkel,

Well composed with a nice flow of the valley into the BG. Clouds provide a similar flow in the sky.

I would suggest opening up the darker areas of the image with a Shadows/Highlights correction. I tried 25/25/30 settings for shadows and liked the result a lot.

[Rachel Hollander]

Morkel - I like the light and its effect on the mountain. I could also see as an alternate crop more of a pano with about an inch off the bottom and using the closest hill as a leading line from the llc.

TFS,
Rachel

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Morkel, very nicely framed. Love the low light hitting the sandstone cliff. Agree on lightening up the shadowed areas a tad. The blue sky in the upper right looks a little too blue to me, I wonder if it needs to be toned down a touch. Nice work with the luminosity masks.:S3:

[Morkel Erasmus]

Thanks for the kind feedback Robert, Rachel and Andrew.

I considered a crop from the bottom as per Racyhel (the OP was already cropped), but that would have meant losing the yellow flowers which were an integral part of my composition at the time.
Here is a repost with the S/H applied as per Robert and some of the more polarised sky desaturated as per Andrew.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Morkel, that looks good to me. Nice repost!

[Robert Amoruso]

Repost does it Morkel, just what I did on my end.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Thanks Andrew and Robert for your additional feedback :S3: