Colorado: Autumn has come!

I had the opportunity to go to Breckenridge today. It was a beautiful day with cool temperatures but a brilliant sky. The fall colors were at their height. I was surprised that there wasn't more snow on the mountain, but I am sure it is coming. I will be up here for meetings later in the week and hope that the weather and colors hold.

For this shot, I used my 18-200mm lens (it is working much better since Steve adjusted it), I took 3 exposure bracketed shots, which means that I took one shot at the "proper" exposure, then 1 shot at 1 exposure value less (i.e. slower shutter speed) then 1 shot at 1 exposure value more (i.e. faster shutter speed). When I got home, I decided to merge them using HDR Efex. All three were very good, but I wanted to bring out the brilliant colors in the aspen more, so I decided to try an HDR first. I first merged all three together, but the photo looked washed out. I tried it again, omitting the lightest exposure. From the result of merging of the two shots, I did a little cropping to highlight the mountain, slightly increased the contrast and desaturated the blue and green a little.

Thank you for all of your comments and stars over J's orchid yesterday!