The Summit

I live in Nebraska and I am very limited to public land and stunning

vistas so I have to look a bit harder for interesting subject matter. I

lived in the mountains for 30 years but now I have to look really hard

for my mountains. All feedback would be great, just curious what

everyone thinks. Thank you.

Hello Jim

A lot of possibilities in the broken ice. A few things I'll mention. The first are the tones. I'd try to recover some of the detail from the blown out sky. I'd also brighten the ice and add contrast with a curves layer on the ice. That would help draw the eye to it and make it look colder. I'm assuming the ice was the focal point. I don't know if you were just wanting a small area to be in focus, hard to tell from your choice of f-stop and shutter speed and ISO. Stopping down I think would have been a better choice to get more of the ice sharp. I'd suggest cropping about 10% of the bottom off to get rid of the dark area in the lower left and some of the OOF ice. I'd don't know if you had other angles but it's a good idea to move around and try different vantage points of something you photograph, higher/lower more to the left or right etc. Nothing worse than getting them up on the computer and saying to yourself if only I had taken this with a little different angle. Some things just jump out at you only after the fact. It's easy to delete something that doesn't work, not so easy or impossible after the fact. I did a quick edit to show what I mean as suggestions and posted it here.

Regards

Greg 

Thanks Gregory! I really appreciate it.

I think Greg gave some excellent suggestions.  I think there's lots of potential here, with the main need being to lessen the light in the sky (which will enhance the colors at the same time) and to get more on to the ice.  That might be accomplished with processing, or it might best be addressed with blending of separate exposures -- I'm not sure.  It might be interesting to try the sun shining through the ice if you can find a way to balance the light (maybe HDR processing).

[i identify with your predicament of moving from the mountains to flat land with limited access.  I did the same (western WA to eastern WA), and I'm desperately looking for an alternative.  I can get only so much out of wheat fields.]

The idea for the composiiton I think was a good one and I can see the attraction in trying to capture the light through the raised ice shards.

Notwithstanding the excellent suggestions from Gregory and Stephen.  If a similar opportunity arises I would make the following changes that would result in a better balance of light and sharpness : -

Aperture of f8

ISO 200

ND8 Graduated Filter.

Tripod

A very slightly higher pespective would allow an unbreached horizontal line across the trees to align the filter.

Best Regards

Alf

Thank you all for your very detailed critiques. I just want you all to know I did not have a tripod and it was very cold so I was shaking pretty good. This was kind of a on the fly kind of photo between my home and my work. I really do appreciate all the advise and I would love to see more.

Just a note - This is a HDR and I used my cameras exposure bracketing setting along with the rapid continuous shooting setting to get the image. Thanks again!