That picture was taken in the small town of Stoneboro, PA. I was there for a church youth camp last week. I got to the lake early hoping for a colorful sunrise, but it didn’t look like it was going to happen. I set my camera up anyway and took a shot when all of a sudden the clouds started turning red! The color lasted for about 5 or 6 minutes.
You have definitely learned the art of processing photos nicely without them looking heavily processed. I will take a look at the links you have provided as I continue this learning process myself! Setting the white and black points is definitely something I need to learn more about.
I think part of it is learning to look at the “whole picture” instead of what you like best about each “part” of the photo. For example, in your first shot, the rich color in the sky is great and so the tendency is to think, “I want the sky to look like THAT!” But looking at the foreground elements, the third photo looks great. It’s easy to think that combining those two as they are would give you the “best of both worlds” so to speak. But when you consider the overall picture, the blend that you have achieved makes the most sense and really, I think, the most pleasing to look at.
Could you have achieved nearly the same results by taking the middle photo and just working with that one exposure by lightening the shadows and darkening the highlights? I would assume that blending is better because more detail is captured in the original exposure as opposed to trying to bring out detail by brightening or darkening. Although sometimes I am amazed at the detail that is actually there in a poorly exposed part of the picture, that becomes evident when the exposure is adjusted.