HDR effort from dawn this morning

Out in the Eden valley very early waiting for dawn to rise this morning. Quite a variety so had a go at using the bracketing feature on the K-5 and merging them with photomatix. K-X didn't really allow bracketing via remote. Dawn was quite beautiful with the mist following the River Eden. Not sure I like the effect yet but it certainly gives some detail on the tree. Big problem with spots on the sensor. Did a very rainy dawn down on Seacliff beach last week and it appears that I've had a bit of a blizzard when changing lenses. Took an age to clone them all out and I've still likely left one or two.

Really love the tones in your photo and there is just enough details in the tree for me

Lovely image and worth getting up early.

There is some red fringing around the fork in the tree. Is that due to the HDR process?

I think it's because the sun is behind. I really like the colours but would personally probably try a slightly off-centre for the tree.

Bret

I like that lighting, and the glow from the sun gives a bit of unreality to the scene as well.

Regarding the composition, I can see two alternative crops - one is to crop off a lot of the right hand side so that the tree branches are just inside the picture. Or even better would be cropping some of the left side off, such that the tree trunk is about one third of the way across with the branches sort of leading into the rest of the sky.