Landscape Photography

I like to think about how insignificant we are in the midst of the magnificent mountains, yet we are up before dawn, boldly carving our way through.
This is Shimla, India.

I'm not sure what this mountain range is called, but it's not very far away from the Himalayas. Shimla is the capital of Himachal Pradesh, located in the northern areas of India, further up above Delhi.

The gear I used is a Canon Rebel T5, with a Sigma 150-600mm contemporary telephoto lens. I shot handheld.
Image: ISO 100, 1/1000s, f/5.6, 150mm

The image was taken early in the morning when the sun was coming up. I like to crank the ISO as low as possible to retain quality. So I was able to dehaze a lot of the image, and the blue came out on its own. (The raw image was mostly grayscale, so I was quite surprised to see so much color). I used a gradient tool to work more on the top of the image, using only the basic sliders. I did not use the hsl sliders to get the golden color.

I honestly don't know what is causing the smoke, but it seemed controlled. I reckon the people in the green-roofed houses had something to do with it. I liked how the uneven ground shaped the base of the smoke, and how it diagonally drifted away, somewhat covering the green-roofed houses. I used the radial tool with luminance-targeted adjustments to bring more white into it.

I reduced the exposure quite a bit and went crazy with the vibrance slider to get that dramatic magenta/purple on the light side of the mountain in the foreground. I think that adds a lot of life, especially since most of the foreground is quite dark.

I'd love to know what you guys think!
btw the images you guys put in are amazing. I love being part of this community :)