Right place, right time

This beautiful light lasted about 5 minutes. Well worth 500ft hike up a small hill near the Superstition Mountains, east of Phoenix. Shot in M, metering the sky first then recomposing. Seemed to work well. Of course my fully charged battery prematurely died soon afterward. Time for a new battery.

RAW, neat image, and some levels, curves.

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Alfa
This is a superb shot I really like it, it was well worth the hike If I had one critism it would be that the red looks like you have over saturated it? Maybe I am wrong and you just caught a great sunset either way its a great shot
Ricky

Nice one,love the rock colours.

Awesome colours in the land but the sky doesn't look at all over-saturated. How much post-processing did you do, Gary?

I will be heading to Phoenix in March, very nice picture.

Thanks for the comments!

Not much processing done. Tweaked a bit in Raw Shooter Essentials. ISO 400 was used, so I ran it through the Neat Image Demo to clean up some noise in the sky. Levels, curves and sharpened in PS. The curves is what really popped the colors, no extra saturation applied. I'm not sure yet, but the mountain may need to be toned down a bit.

I'm starting to like this technique from the "Understanding Exposures" book on taking your meter reading from the sky then recomposing.

Wouldn't work here in Scotland, Gary. The skies may seem gloomy but the land is even darker - most of the time by 2 - 3 stops! So exposing for the sky means black shadowy land.
That's enough of my moaning! Thanks for the info Gary. May you always be able to get up the hills in time for such perfect shots!

Lovely photo - colours are really nice .

Mal & Laura

Alfa; any more info on where you shot this?

Same as Ricko; I too will be there in mar-april (Spring Training! When the Cali's invade the Zonie territory!!)

Wow, the sky is so beautiful out west. Great capture.

SuzyView - going to Grand Canyon this summer, if details work out. I'm trying to get myself geared up to work in RAW instead of JPEG. I have 2 cameras so I think I'll do one RAW and one JPEG just for kicks.

Very nice !

I shot this from Silly Mountain in Apache Junction. It's more like a big hill than a mountain...views to the east are the Superstition Mountains and to the west is Phoenix. Easy to get to; follow Highway 60E through Mesa to Apache Junction(about 40 mins from PHX). Silly Mountain will be on your left at about mile marker 200. Also in the area is Lost Dutchman State Park, Canyon Lake and Peralta Trail.

Colours really are terrific

Check out this month's National Geographic. Great photo report from there with a map and suggestions on when/where to shoot.

Wow!!! Beautiful!!!