Mistical Highlands

The original processing without reduced clarity.

Harry,
Very beautiful! That fog and mist are magical. Processing looks good and I really like the softness provided by negitive clarity. As you mention, due to the stretched mountains, this image lends itself very well to a pano treatment. Perhaps you could crop slightly but I don't think you want to crowd the mountains and lose the expansiveness. If I were to crop, I think that I might take some off the right side. The left side has a lot of interesting elements and I would not want to place them any closer to the left side frame.

Love that soft light on those mountains, Harry, as well as the mist and clouds.  Your composition works very well; personnally I would not crop either side as the semi-pano works well with the mountains and the lines and layers of the snow.  Your processing worked out superb.  An outstanding image in my opinion.

Cool effect with the reduced clarity, and thanks a lot for explaining because I was wondering how you obtained the look in your photo! I think I would stick with the crop you have right now, no need to tighten it at the ends. However, I do see another crop with the blue in the sky cropped out, to give a very different atmosphere. Both would work equally well for me. This is great stuff, Harry, the mist and clouds are sweet.

Beautiful shot Harry, it has great atmosphere and the fog frames the mountians perfectly.  I wouldn't crop in from either side, but I do really like Roel's alternative of cropping out the blue sky, it really changes the mood of the image and with a little darkening of the FG especially the lower left and a little lightening of the mountains it could be pretty interesting.  Just another option but I like this a lot as is.

Mistical (or mystical, ) fit this image very well, Harry.  The lack of detail in the original post adds nicely to the sense of mystery while retaining a moderate sense of realism and the combination works very well. 

Harry, This looks wonderful and I love your processing on the finished image with the reduced clarity. I like this very much as is and don't think I would crop either end. Beautiful image and work! 

Nick Bristol
Lone Rock, WI

Beautiful, Harry.  Excellent scene and well done on the processing, too. 

Just awesome Harry.  Love this one.  I can imagine you have been spending many enjoyable hours processing these images from your Iceland trip. I sorta agree with Roel about cropping the blue sky out, but you can't go wrong with any presentation of this.  Really sweet.

I wonder about reducing the clarity/tonal contrast in that the clouds above the peaks (moreso on the right side) even more so they do not compete with the peaks as much.
 

Harry,

This is stunningly gorgeous!  I think the first words that came to my head were clean and pristine.  Immaculate comes to mind as well.  Just perfect everything... I love this.  I have no nits or suggestions what so ever!

I do have a question about double processing.  I'm going to have to remember, but I may send you or Chris and email at one point to understand how this is done.  Can I assume LR?  I guess I'll have to bone up on that.

Anyway, I can't tell you how much I love this image.  Congrats!

Lon

A stunning presentation and really neat framing effect by the clouds.  Very effective.

Thanks for the comments.  I think the pano crop is a clear winner in the polling. Thanks.  I left the blue sky because I really wanted to keep the top of the cloud on the left.

Lon, I don't use Lightroom.  I just process the RAW in Adobe Camera Raw and finish it up in CS6.  So, the way I processed this image was to make the initial RAW processing which got it very near the final image.  Normally I use a little bit of Clarity adjustment in the initial Camera RAW conversion to improve midtone contrast, as the unprocessed RAW is pretty flat despite the contrast in a scene (this one had bright white snow and very dark volcanic mnt. areas).  I then save as a TIFF.

To double process, I re-open the TIFF file in ACR and then lowered the Clarity slider all the way which maximally reduced the contrast.  I saved this version as Low CLarity.  I then erased to those portions of the Low Clarity for the cloud/mist areas.

I could have also opened the original RAW file and just lowered the Clarity slider, saved under a new name, and then done the same layer / erase.  The ACR is very powerful it seems, and most tonal/color/noise processing can be done here.  Hope that clears up any confusion.

Beautiful image with terrific light and atmosphere, Harry. Having gone back and forth, I can definately say that I can't say I like either version (with and without blue sky) any less than the other. 

Harry: I think Iceland is going to find its way to my bucket list. Marvelous scene superbly captured and presented. I kind of like the idea of a crop from the top but this works great for me as is. Most excellent.>=))>

I love this Harry!! This looks really cold. I wouldn't change a thing.

Hi  Harry  This is so  wonderfully  crafted,    everything is so perfect and natural .....    love how the beautiful colors of the mountains come through, and are in harmony with the clouds and  mist

Albert Darmo
Canada

I love how you handled the fog in this image. It really does feel like fog. I have images like this from 3 years ago that I might try this technique.

I'm also one of those that believes that cropping out the blue sky would improve this image. With that fog the subject is one of muted colors. The bright blue of the sky and some of the shadows goes contrary to the subject matter. I would crop out the sky and desaturate the blue shadows on the right mountain and the large shadow coming from the bottom left. But that's just me.

A beautiful picture Harry and a superb composition but I definitely prefer the pre- processed post.  The initial one has a sort of "plasticated" feel to it, it is most evident to me in the microdetail of texture beneath the blue shadowed slope, I guess as with everything it is simply personal preference.

 

Hi Harry,

I really enjoy how you re-pocessed the image with reduced clarity as it really brings about a more mysterious and soothing mood to the image. I would not crop this image and leave as is. This way the mountains have more room to breath.

Beautiful image and beautiful work in the vision in processing this scene
 

Congratulations on your weekly pick win.  Amazing image!

Awesme & congrats.....................Jim