Ok, it seems that my files were too big.

Flashyphotos wrote in post #11515323
Hi

I just cropped the photo to move the tree to the left and remove the top layer of clouds, I then used the clone tool in Photoshop to work over the branches of the tree that were going out of frame and replace them with blue sky, its not very well done as it was a quick edit on the small size file, but given some time and the large file you could do a great job with it and really finish off the image for a nice effect.

Thanks for letting me know all that you did in the edit. Thanks too for taking the time to help a newbie out.

Lonestarlady61 wrote in post #11517025
Thanks for letting me know all that you did in the edit. Thanks too for taking the time to help a newbie out.

No problem, Get out there and take some more of those landscapes that I don't have the patience to do At least you are in an area where there is a multitude of things to photograph,

I personally have no interest for the first photo. There's absolutely nothing in that photo that catches my eye. The hills are blurry, the composition is poor. I wouldn't even bother editing it. Unless you go back and re-shoot it, don't even bother. The second one is quite nice, though the subject isn't too ideal. Decent exposure and a nice silhouette by the branches. The clouds offer some nice contrast and color to the scene. When you initially compose the shot, I would have either chosen to widen out and include the whole scene, or choose to crop out the tops of the other trees and have just the tippy top of the tree. Go either all the way in or all the way out.

DinosaurioAllie wrote in post #11517751
I personally have no interest for the first photo. There's absolutely nothing in that photo that catches my eye. The hills are blurry, the composition is poor. I wouldn't even bother editing it. Unless you go back and re-shoot it, don't even bother. The second one is quite nice, though the subject isn't too ideal. Decent exposure and a nice silhouette by the branches. The clouds offer some nice contrast and color to the scene. When you initially compose the shot, I would have either chosen to widen out and include the whole scene, or choose to crop out the tops of the other trees and have just the tippy top of the tree. Go either all the way in or all the way out.

Thanks so much for your input. I agree that the first image is lacking in many ways. I used my standard zoom lens when I should have used the 55-250 mm lens. The 2nd image was hard to capture nicely since it was shot from my backyard. I had to crop out the neighbors houses etc...which left me with this image. I'll try another crop to eliminate all but the tree and clouds.