After the thunderstorm

A short thunderstorm brought freshness after a hot day in the French Auvergne region. The thunderstorm moved away and left this sky in the blue hour after sunset.
I was there on a short holiday with my wife, and hiking was the goal, not photography :wink: So no gradient ND available, no tripod… It took some work on the raw file to come to this image.

Any comment is welcome, but especially your opinion about the colour of the foreground. I tried to get the mood I remembered, but I don’t know how this works for a more objective viewer.

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

Pentax K5, Pentax DA 55-300mm @120mm, ISO400, f8 and 1/80sec.

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A pleasing sunset image with interesting color and clouds in the sky. Obviously the emphasis should be on the sky with this type of color, but even though you kept the landscape minimal, there are some interesting elements to appreciate such as the trees and building. The exposure in the sky looks pretty good and my only suggestion would be to lift the shadows a little bit in the landscape, while keeping the trees in silhouette.

The colors look natural and leave the viewer with the mood of the evening light. The long horizon line gives me a sense of a right hand tilt to the scene. If you have more room on the bottom or don’t object to using content aware, I would try to straighten it at least partially.

Real nice sky and the undulating hills set it off nicely. I could see experimenting with Ed’s suggestion, but I would not do too much. It looks good as presented.

What a great way to end the day, Han! The sky looks awesome and I love the peaceful nature of those undulating hills. This is being real nitpicky, but I would clone out the little bright spot to the left of middle toward the bottom edge as it slightly tugs at my eye. Just a suggestion of course. Beautifully done.

@Ed_McGuirk, @Harley_Goldman, @Patricia_Brundage and @Ed_Lowe: thank you.
Ed, the little bright spot is a stone, and indeed, it is better to clone it out.
Patricia, I don’t understand what exactly you mean. There are very few really horizontal or vertical lines in the image, and I don’t share your feeling that the image is tilted.

Han,

Beautiful sunset/dusk sky and clouds - love the blue hour colors you’ve captured and presented.

I don’t mind the silhouettes and the darker landscape - after all it is after sunset. So I can’t really say you could do anything different with this.

Lon

Guess I’m the only one who is seeing the slant in the horizon line. Maybe its my aging eyes.