I'm mixing up my submissions at the moment with older and newer shots. I want to have some variety in my gallery and the shots I upload.

Location

This is one of my favourite landscapes in southern Portugal, especially at this time of year when the crops are starting to grow and the hills are endless green. I've shot here before [link] and since then have wanted to go back with a better lens and shoot with a tripod.
I had the opportunity as we were passing through on our way south a few weeks ago, but once again, the sky was completely clear so I composed shots without any sky in them.
The light was however, lovely, and I spent a happy 45 minutes wandering around the fields shooting telephoto landscapes of the area.
I'll come back here later in the year, perhaps at Easter, when the grass will be a little longer and maybe camp out, as the valleys here should get a nice layer of dawn mist...we'll see.

The Photo

The hardest thing about shots like these is keeping the composition really clean and uncluttered when there is so much going on in the landscape. The telephoto is really great for isolating individual elements and compressing depth, and I spent a lot of time scanning the edges of the viewfinder making sure that it was clear and that there was nothing distracting in the composition.
The lens has VR, but all the same, it was windy and using a tripod will always increase the sharpness of an image. I also used a polarizer to increase the saturation of the greens of the grass and cut out any glare or reflections.

I really enjoy the "letterbox" format, so many of the shots were either composed to be cropped later (as is the case here) or shot as 2 or 3 image panoramas.

Metadata

Taken near Aljustrel, Alentejo, Portugal
Nikon D3 | Nikkor 80-400 ED VR
Gitzo GT2541 tripod w/ Gitzo GH1780QR ballhead
Hoya CPL Pro 1 polarizer
1/350 | f5 | 145mm | ISO200

Workflow in Apple Aperture 2. Title in PS

Thanks in advance for any comments or faves. Sadly, I no longer have time to reply to individual comments, but I do appreciate people taking the time to look.
Any questions, please note me.