Composition, what not to do

There was this incredible roadside stand of aspens with green, yellow, and even some red.  We pull over grab tripods and cameras and go to it.

The colors still are incredible !, so much so that I am tempted to mute them.   However as I look at this image what I notice is that I keep following the aspens out of the picture at the left.   Everywhere else the aspens are bounded by something.  This leaves the viewer with a feeling of incompleteness.  I want the red over on the left.

How could I solved this problem?

• I could jump the fence and move up to the left or right so that I was looking at the stand of trees  from a 45 degree view
• I could move backwards and get the whole stand, however, I would be in the middle of the highway if I did that, and the stand would be smaller.
• Move back and then crop the image to make the stand a larger part of the image with a decrease in pixels, resolution and the ability to print.
• Change lens to a wider lens, with the same issues as the previous one about pixel counts.
• Make a panorama of it that gave me a higher pixel count so that I could print, and allows me to choose what I wanted in the photo.  This is the option that I chose.

Here is a panorama of that scene unprocessed.  It was built using Photoshop, although sometimes I use PTGui if it is difficult or I want more control over the outcome.

from the Pano generator

There are a number of items that need addressing

• Color balance and vividness; this is NOT what it looked like in real life
• Telephone poles and lines
• Sky

After dealing with these (mostly in Photoshop) we have this image

Final Panorama

I still don’t like the sky.