I appreciate the comment. I agree with you and sometime I do forget that I can overcook an image even at OOC. The 3-stop ND may have been too much. I think I'll play the the image again. I'll edit the RAW file and tone down the sky a bit and then blend the two and see what happens. I'll fiddle with it until it looks...well, around medium/
I'll post a 2nd edit and see if the sushi lovers will like it
Man...you're right about Galen Rowell. The first time I visited his gallery, I was a bit surprised that some of his images were medium well to well done. I was thinking that his slides were digitized and them Photoshopped to give it that look. Like you said, he may have used too much ND back in the day.
I saw some of Tom Till's work at his gallery and he really fries a few of his work to a crisp. But then again, what I think is overcooked maybe not be to him and others...and is making him some good $$$.
Somehow people assume that if it is OOC, it can not be overcooked. Well, it can. Using a wrong GND filter strength (as it was the case here) results in overcooking at the shooting stage.
Late Galen Rowell was occasionally criticized for that too. However, in his defense, he was among the pioneers in using GND and can be forgiven for being carried away on occasion. Also, given his shooting technique, ie, traveling/running/climbing light, often with just one (smallish) camera and one lens, he can be forgiven for not carrying with him the whole assortment of GND strengths. At the same time, shooting slides, he could not reverse the effect in post-processing as easy as we can do today.