Kool Thanks for the effort. Do I have your permission to take the photo and crop it with a vignette?

Nice Payoff

Curious what it would be like without the key shadow.

Hey K

Since you have the NIK collection; my suggestion is to do a selection of the sky and then inverse the selection for the greenery. Then Re-balance the Water. Apply NIK BI-Color User Defined. You should get four or five choices. Choose one which gives you Green as your second choice. Then change the color (upper range) to light pink and make adjustments in Opacity, and balance the colors for Upper & Lower Distribution. Good Luck.
I've played and experimented a lot with these filters. To me its part of the Learning curve. Let me know if you prefer a different type of learning.

Ah yes, beauty & creativity is in the eye of the beholder. I like this version a lot as well. Now if we apply the rule of thirds and the idiocy of our subject matter cant' be too centered or the photo too symmetrical, then what do we have? Perhaps a cropping left of the tree and some of the foreground grass.

But I digress. Thanks for providing a cleaner version. Either way its a nice composite.

Hi Linda

Sorry about the delay... I'm still working and not retired yet so my hours are sporadic. I believe I am referring to the moonset with the Moon, silhouette tree and house. https://static.uglyhedgehog.com/upload/2020/2/18/620419-ture_and_lynn_and_my_brush.jpg

At least on my computer, the texture (especially the blue & pink sky) appears full of striations with a lot of noise.

I like the denoise program from Topaz which allows you to denoise based on camera and then ISO.

Great Concept.

I love the creativity all the way around. I'm not a big fan of the textured look as it makes the stamp and subsequent photo look like it was copied from a post card. A suggestion would be to run it through an advanced noise reduction program to smooth it out.

Otherwise, a nice composite!

Kudos on your artistic ability and creativity. But overall I'm not a big fan of the shot. I know its HDR and for me most of it looks overcooked. I am going off the download end result. Split the image into 5 horizontal pieces. The first left panel looks very good. The other four are overcooked. Hopefully its the software and you could adjust each layer by adjusting the opalescence.

As photographers, we are all subject to the equipment we use and then the skill of using the equipment. Its easy for us to overstretch the ability of the camera and try to correct it in post processing. I believe you are a good photographer. Your equipment is designed for closeups and the more you stretch it for far away landscapes, the trickier it becomes.

Good luck in your endeavors.

I definitely second or third what Dave O says + others... It depends on where you want to go in the park. When we went, we were lucky enough to book at Yellowstone Lodge, which is centrally located... and did it 4 months in advance. If you haven't done your research; Start Now. There are basically four entrances. N, S, E, W. Even being centrally located, we wanted to spent one day in the Mammoth Area (north entrance) which is way North. By the time you account for traffic, sightseeing, critters, and maybe one stop; it can take you 4 hrs one way + you have to come back. There is a lodge in this area if that's on your hot list, if you can get in. Best advice: Book several locations if you can. Plan what you want to see, start early, and make the best use of your time. You won't be the only there. Good Luck. It's worth the trip.

Nice photos to start... FYI At least in Photoshop, you can still open your Jpegs as if they were Raw and make post processing improvements if desired. Add a series of filters from other programs and you're all set.

Just had to say it... Stop kidding around. lol

One little trick, at least in photoshop, is too use a slight gausian blur on the sky without distorting it's place in the image. This helps with the depth of field to our eyes.

Hey Kevin

I know you may not be there yet or want to make an extra investment. Some of us like to tinker and have several hours to spend on creative projects, and that's okay. But yet the effect may not quite be right when we're done. That's why photographers, post processors, and creative artists will make the investment in additional software which gives you basically a set of filters (one of those being fog) to apply to your photographs. Software specialists have worked out the algorythems and we apply it to post processing. You may have heard of NIK and Topaz. There are plenty of others. It's just a thought. Good Luck.

This is the best I could do on short notice. Good Luck to all.

Is this tree in a swampy area? It may be their version of a Banyan Tree. Nice pics with emphasis on subject matter.

Let's remember to appreciate Mother Earth all year round.

A composite photo.