This image was shooted when looking for compositions on a nearby mountain.
I like the drama of the clouds and the “path” the light does, but i would like to know what you guys thing. Theres is something that doesnt click for me, i just dont know what.
The composition and the use of backlight on the lower part of the image.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
It’s a tripod shot, single exposure.
In post, used dehaze by TK, added some luminosity masks on bith the sky and land, and some dodge and burn to create more contrast on the coulds.
If you would like your image to be eligible for a feature on the NPN Instagram (@NaturePhotoNet), add the tag ‘ig’ and leave your Instagram username below.
@jferrao88
You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
I’m surprised there haven’t been any replies to this one as it has a very powerful ‘the heavens open up’ vibe to it aesthetically…especially with the church standing out on the ridge. Images with such a dramatic message need pretty dramatic processing to emphasize that message…, IMO of course.
Technically, there are a variety of processing I options I would explore that hopefully would help accentuate the underlying msg. Not sure which would work, if any, but things I would be inclined to experiment with…
My goal would be to create the feeling of one big ‘ray’ of sunlight shining down on the church. And I think a B&W conversion would be well suited to doing so.
The upper right corner appears to be ‘blown out’ (at least as viewed through my browser). Bright spots such as that tend to draw the viewer’s eye to them, and when right on the edge/corner of a frame tend to keep pulling the eye back to that bright spot. Because there also appears to be little, if any, detail in the clouds in the upper left corner area as well, I’d play around with cropping off some of the top portion…to minimize some of the ‘dead space’ in upper left as well as the blown out upper right corner. I’m guessing it might be nice in a square aspect ratio.
To accentuate the ‘ray’, I’d experiment with darkening the clouded areas outside the path of the ray and lighten up it’s actual path. For me, both tend a little too strongly to a ‘middle gray’ tonality and the entire sky area could benefit from additional contrast.
There appears to be a town(?) along the hillside below the church. The available detail is just sufficient to make me wonder what exactly is there. But not enough to enable the eye to make a determination what. I’d probably play with a couple options here…(a) let the hillside go entirely to silhouette and hide all that detail, or…(b) open up the ground areas to more fully reveal what’s on the hillside. My guess is that my preference would be option (a). And that because the ray of light shining on the church is the core of the image’s msg. But I might be surprised at how much more detail in the area might add to it as well.
It’s an image I wish I had in my catalogue and would find a way to use post processing to enhance the powerful story. Of course, the ‘story’ I see and the suggestions I’ve posed may not make it the purest of ‘landscape’ images, but one worth telling whatever genre it may fit.
First of all thank you for all the feedback and for taking the time to write such an detailed post.
So on your topics, i tried B/W but i liked the subtle colours on the clouds, maybe now (after a couple of months i’ll try the B/W again.
I dont have with me the original file (its on the house computer) but i think you are right con the blown ULC, i’ll check it out later. When shoting the light was very direct on that spot and didn’t had much time to bracket.
The houses on the hillside, i left them just a tad exposed just to make the eye see that they are there. I even lowered the exposure a bit on that area. The idea of a siluette could be interesting, didn’t tried it because it was the inicial idea for the image, but i’ll have a go on that for sure.
I’ll try to post the results when i mess around with it again,
Again, thank you so much for your response.
Cheers.
