Beautiful shot Iwona
I love the composition and the details.
cool colors +10

Excellent composition. Love the mood.
John

Very nice composition..Beautiful place.. +9

Amazing composition, colors, mood, everything! +8/8

I really love the mood. IMHO the composition is decent, but the crop is too square IMO, and I think that there should be either more or less space on the left to help improve it. that is just my opinion.

Lovely
I like the overcast sky.

Top Marks

thanks guys.
Poohblah: you are right, i was really upset that i had to crop the sides off. the reason was crap cokin holder, which was unstable on my lenses committing horrible vignette. CRY DOT COM

amazing indeed! +9

Wow, looks like an awesome place...glad to see you took this with a Tokina 12-24mm...cause I'm thinking of buying one and seeing it in action is nice. How do you like that lens?

Amazing capture! Beautiful place!

Ahhh I've been trying to earn some money for the 12-24 tokina as well
Excellent photo!

excellent photo. i like the color and mood!
top marks!

Excellent use of lighting. Great scene.

Cokin filters are Great, I have used them for 20yrs, the rule in my book about filters in photoshop and "real" filters like Cokin is that it should not be obvious that you used them.. and it is obvious you used it here. also the angle of the filter is wrong.
You mentioned the holder for the filter was clipping the frame, tip, put the holder back into your bag and hold the filter in front of the lens with your hand, and in the case of the images above, I would have held the filter at an angle so it only covered the sky and not the land area itself..
Hope this helps, but for me this is the failing in the image above.. Wrong use of Filter..

thanks guys for all the comments.

but Almost-Human, i have to disagree with you totally. the photo might not be perfect but the reasons are different than those you mentioned. the problem with the dark land here is because i took this photo against the light. it is obvious then that the land will come out dark or black even. even nd grad can't prevent that (unless you want the sky to be overexposed). i pulled the exposure up in ps. plus the filter was angled the way you mentioned.
the thing is that the holder for cokin z-pro simply sucks. i think it's made of crap material (plastic) and "clicking on the lense" doesn't really make the whole construction stable. i had to crop the sides off because the holder moved on my lense. what's more, my bf almost lost it on the cliff cuz it got detached itself. i think it's ridiculous they call this series pro, if it can't just stay still on the lense.
about taking the filter with my hand: yeah it might be a good idea if i'm sure i can stand still with it. but i was on the cliff with a fence of questionable safety and 20 kids running around and against me. besides, what is this holder for anyway than for saving you from holding it with your hand. i guess we'll just get lee system which appears to be much more stable.
well, thanks for the opinion tho.

hum, well lets put it this way. you expose for the Land area, and use the ND filter to hold back the sky, failing this your going to have to use HDR to get it right or two different exposures one for the land and one for the sky.. and blend them together..
As for the pro series.. well in my experience the pro series is in fact just larger filter sizes, but you mentioned the Z pro, not sure what that is, either way I have about 50 + cokin filters and they are excellent and I never use the holder.

With regard to the ND8 filter, for anyone wondering what this is its a nutral density Filter, its job is to hold back light from getting to the lens, not to be confused with a graduated Gray filter, the difference between the two is simple, they both darken the image but the ND does it without changing colours, the Gray Grad simply makes things gray and that includes clouds.

Now you said you held it at an angle.. but in the image above the rock on the top right looks dark, did you clip this rock with the grad? I am assuming it is a ND grad ?

Hope this helps and I never knew you had 20 kids well done !

Great work!

Very nice lighting and mood!.....I would try to increase the saturation just a little.
Carlos

yeah i know i could make it hdr, but still from how it turned out i think bracketing wasn't necessary. getting back to the point, i still reckon that holder is there for a reason. say, how can you take a long exposure at all then if you are supposed to hold the filter with your hand?

and yeah surely it's nd8 grad, as i mentioned in description. now look at the scenery again, the rock on the right is dark because it's in a deep shadow, since the light is from the back and also the trees and bushes around add to it. you can also notice the same shadow in the bottom right corner and that couldn't obviously be a filter ;p one more thing: with this kind of sky the light is pretty uneven; you have those very bright areas and those deep shadowed ones. that's not too easy environment. i was actually lucky that there was some sunlight on that big rock at all.

sidenote: luckily i didn't make those 20 kids, it was just another group of hundreds which followed us on the trail and made making photos very arduous .

Carlos: you're right, i was just too careful with not changing too much

wow. realy impressive. amazing sky. i love it +10

Brilliant, this has all the elements that inspire me to paint - top marks!

beautiful!!!

amazing sky ~

Nice composition !! But then don't know if the horizon is tilted or naturally so ?
Wonder if also having another grad filter probably ND2 grad held vertically to make the dark to bright cloud transition even would have helped.. !!! Agree with Carlos too !!
Like the composition for ability to capture depth !! Well done !!

Moody!

sorry double post

Wonderful!! Very nice composition and lighting!
Great stuff, agree with moserArtist, moody +10

Gorgeous. +10

Nice! BTW Where is that place?

Amazing shot , excelent work

Wow, breathtaking...

Wow, the sky is amazing. well done

Great sky and composition.

Wonderful!

Maybe getting some details out of the shadows selectively (but gently) on the nearest rock platform would do it good (I've just tried it, it leads the eye to the platform faster, I'd say).
Btw., try a smart sharpening technique on this one, the sharpening method you've used seems to be somewhat rough on the details.
Good timing on the shot, it's nicely composed too, although Pooblah does have a good point.

i kinda liked the shadows this way. and actually, i used smart sharpening. the thing is probably that i should have used it selectively. thanks for opinion tho.

this is a fantastic picture Iwona! very well composed, the colors are beautiful and the sharpness is perfect!
top marks!

Excellent photo !

Late to the party, so anything constructive I had to say has already been said; so, let me just say, great place/mood and nice photo.

Yeah, the composition is wonderful, very atmospheric capture, well done . . . .

Great ... like a dreaming painting...+10

Wonderful! +10/10