Zahara

This is a great view of the town, and I can only imagine the history at this coastal location.  In the hours near dawn or dusk, the vegetation naturally turns fairly dark, especially if it was backlit.  That has happened here.  Unfortunately, vegetation occupies a central and significant portion of the foreground.  Imagine if there had been additional buildings in the central foreground similar to what we see in other parts of the frame.  I have a feeling that the photograph would have been even more attractive, simply because there would be more that the viewer could see.  I think a slightly different location, one with a different foreground, might enhance the overall look.  

Also, we often complain about too much saturation being added to a shot, but in this case I have a feeling (although I can't be certain because I wasn't there) that the true color of the sun near the horizon was an even more intense orange-yellow.  I don't know if this was a single exposure or a blend of more than one exposure, but perhaps that was the source of somewhat muted sky colors (again, it's a big assumption on my part that the colors are muted -- I could be entirely wrong and you may have captured exactly what you saw here).

Hi Stephen,

    Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. I am really really appreciated. I picked the highest platform in the town because it offers a panoramic view. However, the trade off is that it includes the distracted trees in the central foreground, especially the one at the front. BTW, this town is "most beautiful" when photographing it on the other side of the reservoir (as most people do) but I would like to try a different perspective at that time.

Regarding to the saturation of the sky, although this is a HDR image (combining with three shots) but I didn't do any special treatment to change the color of the sky. When viewing this image on an Ipad, the color seems "ok" to me....but I could be wrong as I usually prefer soft colors....

Thank you again for the detail analysis and the suggestions.

Thanks

Bobby