landscape Snow geese @ Bosque del Apache

never seen something like this. the aperture, not complitely open, let the light free to touch more elements. i like this too.

You've done a remarkable job in controlling the sun while allowing detail to be revealed throughout the photo.  It's clearly a sign of excellent processing, and I'd be interested in knowing how you accomplished it.

Thank you Andrea and Stephen for your kind words. Strangely, the raw capture does not look dark on capture NX2 which I use for processing. I did change picture control to portrait mode. The sun is actually blown out, including the sky around it. In my experience with HDR (not at this location), the blown out area accounts for around 7 stops and the rest of the scene about 5 stops with a stop in between. So I really have a 6 stop scene here which is within limits for the D200. I increased contrast in post processing (although selectively). Processing: D-lighting (shadow and highlight recovery), lowered highlight contrast in luminosity to ease transition, increased shadow contrast, local contrast, increased contrast on white areas, warming. Processing went downhill from there with me trying to bring out details with micro contrast and sharpening... maybe I'll try again next year... It does look fine at 100% though, just not at this small size.

Of course, no other software would handle the blow out correctly... maybe the fuji s3 would have done it better.

edit: just checked.. photivo does it fine too