General feedback. Photo from Mount Rainier. Would you add more contrast? Where would you add the contrast?
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Hi Larry! I would not add more contrast, maybe remove some, especially on the right side of the sky. Did you use a polarizer on a wide angle here? The sky gets much darker locally on the right and I would try to balance that out by opening up the shadows. The sky has interesting clouds in it, but the 3 in the center draw a bit too much attention maybe? Lowering the brightest higlights would help to get some more details in them. Personally I would have liked to see more of the foreground here, to lead the eye to the cloudy sky. Looks like a beautiful area!
I think there is plenty of contrast. For me, I think there is too much sky, my eye keeps going up and out of the frame. I wish there was more foreground to help tell me where you took this photo from. Maybe that wasn’t an option but more foreground would help.
This is a bit awkward for me to look at. I would have included more of the mountains below, it almost feels like they are in there poking up in the bottom of the frame by accident. If you wanted to just showcase the sky, I would have just excluded them completely.
Larry,
I think you did well to showcase the sky; it’s pretty obvious that’s what you’re trying to convey and those clouds are certainly worthy of the capture.
So I like the comp, viewpoint and what you’ve seen and captured. I’m not so sold on the processing for the sky. The snow and mountains look good with the exposure and contrast. But to me the sky, something isn’t working as well and it’s hard to put a finger on it. To black up top and/or too much contrast, maybe. One thing that is catching me is the big cloud right off the top of the central peaks. It’s seems much darker/grayer than the surrounding snow, or the little fluffy clouds up top. Makes me wonder how the original color looks?
Don’t mean to harp on the sky processing, but I will say that I like the image and I think it’s worth the effort to tweak/change it. I’m just hard pressed for suggestions!
Lon
I agree with the others that the contrast is plenty. Even though the sky is the main subject here, I think it might work better with a little crop off the top to help the land have some mass. Having 30 percent more foreground would have made that full sky work, but for me, the mountain flanks become too insignificant. It’s a challenge, and maybe the scene was worthy of a vertical stitch? It’s lovely really, and those clouds are amazing.
Here is a quickie crop in Windows photo, which I think feels more balanced (assuming balance is one of the objectives). I can almost imagine a more flat pano (cropping all of the popcorn clouds and keeping just the central cloud and the radiating ones), but that’s definitely a different image altogether, and I want to honor your celebration of cloud diversity here.
