These are so good, Jim. #2 has the slight edge for me, just for uniqueness. Your photography has gotten so much better over the 3 years, makes me wonder what I've been doing with myself
edited to add: and as such, this means your website is LONG overdue for an update
I might pump up the whites higher so it looks a bit less HDR, they may not have been full mid-day white but considering the limited DR of displays usually setting white near max ends up more natural (not always but usually for a scene like this where you have a sky area that should be brighter than a ground area and where the DR was high and you still need good range and contrast in the ground area otherwise you get the pine needles feeling about as bright as the white clouds to the eye which would be a very thing in the real world).
#1 for me has such great texture and rock detail and nice warmth on the cap. Lovely contrast and a beauty of a sky!
#2 Gosh that sky is killer! For me the foreground rock and water is nicely visible but yet allows my eyes to easily drift off and upwards to appreciate the BG light and sky details, just wonderful sir
Jim, I really like 97% of both of them...the 3% that I don't like is the snow/ice bank on the right, it looks odd, over processed with shadows that don't seem right for snow...it is more pronounced in the twilight image.
Awesome images. I have been to this area multiple times and can never get enough of!
This may be an odd comment, but some how, to my eyes, the scene looks a little "stretched" horizontally. The mountain in the background looks the little compressed so to speak and the tree the middle seems to be trying to push itself reach to the edge of the frame. May be a little perspective correction will help these images tremendously. But again, that is just one person's opinion and since no others have mentioned it, it may be just fine!
Thanks for posting this one. Unlike the demo pictures from the Samyung i have seen, this is a real photograph. I agree with everyone about the excellent composition, color rendition and exposure of both 1 and 2. Where I diverge is my assessment of the sharpness of image 1. I have looked at it on two monitors and IMHO it seems too sharp, a bit crunchy. Could this benefit from some tuning of the down-sizing process?
