More Douglas Preserve Painting

So on my way out of the Douglas Family Preserve, (or, the Wilcox Property), Out of the corner of my eye I see a small flash of color. Turns out to be a lady out walking and she has on this bright red jacket or shirt and it caught my eye. All of my painting gear was in my backpack and my camera was in hand so I snapped a quick pic on the fly. I like when someone is near big trees to show the scale of the tree height. Later I was looking through my pics of the area and came across that photo. I took it into Photoshop and zoomed in on that area with the lady and liked how there was this nice gap in the treeline showing the distant mountains in the background....I live on the otherside of those mountains in the Santa Ynez Valley by the way.
I cropped that area and decided to paint it.....nice distance with the mountains while at the same time giving good contrast with the foreground trees. Couldn't do the height because I wanted to go horizontal not vertical....purely a framing decision. Here is my cropped area........

  I cropped about 5 or 6 different scenes based on this area of the photo but this one worked for me. I really like eucalyptus trunks.....nice creamy whites/pinks/gray and a bit of orange on the bark. Long slender trunks with gentle curves and all of that green foliage and skyholes.....they are just too fun not to paint.
Here is my finished painting below. I didn't want the houses in the dip in the landscape nor the lady walking in there....just a personal thing. I also pushed the background more than what's there to give the painting more depth than what nature was offering me. The visibility was awesome that day making the backgroundtoo intense for a painter so I use artist license to grey it down pushing it into the distance.

"View From The Douglas Preserve"

12X16 Oil on Panel