Amazed how much I can pull out of a D700 NEF

I recently took my first trip with my D700, to the Four Corners states. I posted some pics when I first got back, based on a first pass through with Lightroom. The following pic I initially didn't even post-process because the out-of-camera defaults in Lightroom 2 didn't look impressive compared to some other shots. I decided to make another pass this week through the pictures and see if I had any hidden gems there and came across this one.

I dragged the exposure slider to the left and saw fantastic stuff in the sky. I dragged it to the right and saw fantastic stuff on ground. I just couldn't get over how much data was in this NEF file. The default had completely black ground and mediocre sky. I knew I wasn't get what I wanted just using the tools in LR, so decided to bring into PS CS4 as a Smart Object. I then duplicated the Smart Object and exposed one for the sky and another for the land and blended with a layer mask. (I also converted to LAB mode for a color boost, and sharpened in PS).

Pretty blown away by what I thought was a throw away image:

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