I like both of them. As you say, the second image is more traditional. The first image, for me, is kind of erie which is cool as you are looking at ruins. Nice work, Rod
Ask and ye shall receive. 8)
I have no clue about the blurring. I scanned a printed image to get the digital one to post and it may have happened then???
Secrets? Not really, LoGill. I always bracket “difficult” (meaning anything other than sun over your shoulder) images. Plus or minus 2 stops over and under the meters recommended exposure will almost always give you the “perfect” exposure (this image was one stop under). Another trick to get clouds to look good is to shoot landscape images on a tripod. Then take one image with the correct sky exposure and the second image with the ground exposed correctly. Then just put them together in your photo editing prgm. Clouds are SO important to a great landscape image and too often people expose for the foreground and let the sky fall where it may which almost always results in an overexposed sky.