Originally posted by Dean2 To be honest, of all the versions and changes, I like the original the best of all. I think the op did a great job on the White Balance and I think the colour saturation and cropping create a very interesting landscape that looks just like mid day, mid afternoon sun on the mountain top and being reflected into the darker fore ground. Post 12's version is the closest to the original, but that version looks more like sun setting.
I agree with Dean, I much prefer the original to any of the edited versions. It seems unnecessary to add unreal colors / white balance when the original was a very beautiful, realistic winter scene. Only thing I might have done differently aside from tweaking contrast a tiny bit, is lower the camera and angle up a tiny bit, so that those top branches that encroach on the mountain wouldn't be there. Then you would have a mount surrounded by blue sky, and trees on the left leading down to the river.
But.. sometimes there is no perfect solution, too far up, branches on the top. Too far down, twigs and and grass from the bottom. One of my favorite winter images I captured is beautiful, but has twigs and limbs in front of my scene, and there was nothing I could do about it due to location on a river bank. So I chose to take the image in the best way I could so that the twigs still worked for the composition, instead of against it (at least as much as possible).
So sometimes we just have to do the best we can with what we have!