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Well, I managed up with the larks this morning and after a half hour drive to Loch Lomond (empty roads - hurrah!) I took a few snaps. The sunrise was ok, although not spectacular and I think the blue hour photos I managed came out better, if I'm honest. The image below is a stitched panorama and I'm keen to have some thoughts from you "landscapers". I suspect I have overdone the processing - to be honest I don't yet have a good enough eye to be able to know how much is "ok" and when it veers into gaudy. I actually ended up bringing the saturation on this down because I felt it just looked too blue... my camera does seem to make the blue hour really blue and my tweaks here and there probably don't help 
I found selecting the crop very hard... a more conventional 1/3:1/3:1/3 just didn't feel right so I've ended up with this with the horizon just below the mid line - not exactly "standard" by any stretch. Trees left and right effectively framed the image but I found them very distracting so just cropped the image inside them. At this time of year the sun rises exactly behind Ben Lomond's peak so the wonderful gradient sky behind is genuine. I managed to catch about the only half hour where the moon was high enough to be over the peak but not yet drowned out by the sun.
It was a total of 8 images shot with my Tamron 17-50mm at its min f/l. ISO was 200 to keep the exposure time somewhat reasonable at 10s and f/16. The meter was showing a swing of about 2EV between the brightest frame (the valley to the left of the Ben) and the darkest (the edges with the trees), so I decided it probably wasn't worth bracketing my panorama, especially since I wanted the Ben itself to be in silhouette.
So, please fire away - I've only been shooting for about 6 months so I know I've got masses to improve on and just after a few pointers on what to start with
Cheers
Ben Lomond in the blue hour by pjm1 (Paul), on Flickr
I found selecting the crop very hard... a more conventional 1/3:1/3:1/3 just didn't feel right so I've ended up with this with the horizon just below the mid line - not exactly "standard" by any stretch. Trees left and right effectively framed the image but I found them very distracting so just cropped the image inside them. At this time of year the sun rises exactly behind Ben Lomond's peak so the wonderful gradient sky behind is genuine. I managed to catch about the only half hour where the moon was high enough to be over the peak but not yet drowned out by the sun.
It was a total of 8 images shot with my Tamron 17-50mm at its min f/l. ISO was 200 to keep the exposure time somewhat reasonable at 10s and f/16. The meter was showing a swing of about 2EV between the brightest frame (the valley to the left of the Ben) and the darkest (the edges with the trees), so I decided it probably wasn't worth bracketing my panorama, especially since I wanted the Ben itself to be in silhouette.
So, please fire away - I've only been shooting for about 6 months so I know I've got masses to improve on and just after a few pointers on what to start with
Cheers
Ben Lomond in the blue hour by pjm1 (Paul), on Flickr
