Hi all, I’d love some feedback on this please. I’ve had this image sitting for a while now while I decided how best to process it to do it justice. To put this in perspective I have never seen clouds like this on the North West coast of the UK. We regularly get nice stormy light but this circular cloud was something unfamiliar quite amazing.
The cloud was moving quickly across the horizon and, as usual, I was late turning up to shoot. I shot the background/sky first before the cloud disappeared out of sight and then started shooting foregrounds. Foreground wise there wasn’t much on the beach so I relied on the receding waves to form some nice leading lines. I really quite like the shape of this one as again, it was nothing like any of the other images I captured that day and the shape was quite unique.
The mid ground is soft and lacking detail where the waves are breaking which is due to needing to focus close to the lens and not having the required DOF. I’m not actually that bothered about this as it doesn’t take away from the dominant foreground with the leading lines to the storm cloud and light.
Processing wise I’ve blended a foreground and background together. Brought out some detail in the cloud, emphasised the orange glow of the light and done some colour work to the image in general.
Do you think that the cloud needs some more work to bring out more detail with some more burning? I’m also not sure about the overall balance of the image although I don’t really think there is much I can do about that in post.
Hi @Chris_Mitchell, very imressive shot, i love the waves in the foreground. Regarding the sky, i would take the shot with the orange glow close to the centre of the frame. Thanks for sharing.
Interesting cloud formation Chris! I’m working on a storm cloud seascape as we speak and will post that soon. Anyway, the foreground wave has great detail, but I can’t see any sand grains…so I’m curious if that’s my monitor (using work laptop - don’t tell on me!). The motion of the foreground and midground waves are congruous and to have blended in sharper or more motioned waves would’ve been a bit disorienting, so I agree with your instinct that it’s not a problem.
Regarding the sky, the yellow/orange on the L. border is beautiful, but pulls away from your main event - the circular cloud above. Also, there is some bluish casting in the lower right part of the main cloud while the remainder of the cloud remains a neutral or warm grey. I say this because the local color here is distinct from the remainder of the cloud so is disharmonious with the remainder of the scene. Perhaps it looked this way? I don’t think I’d do much about the luminance values. There contrast within the sky itself looks great and I don’t think the clouds need to be any darker.
Finally, in the yellow/orange sky, there is some more prominent textures than I would otherwise expect. So this creates a textural contrast to my eye, which is in contrast to the softer edges of the remainder of the clouds. Again, no judgment here, just pointing out some contrasting elements that you may or may not have intended.
At the end of the day, I’d struggle to create the balance necessary with what’s presented. The colors in the sky are distracting to the main event - that cloud you like so much. For me, I’d be tempted to convert to B&W. Hope this helps!
Thanks Jim. Ive been staring at it for a few days thinking the same about the orange I think I was just taken by how beautiful it was to consider removing it but there’s no getting away from the fact that it is distracting.
To be honest you can’t really make out the sand in the raw file either. The water was moving really quickly so maybe that has something to do with it. Plus I’ve removed any of the original colour out of the sand and darkened it down as it didn’t really fit with the rest of the colour pallette.
There was a lot of blue in the cloud and I had to dial it back quite a bit but left it slightly blue as again, the colours and formation were so unlike anything we ever get round here.
I think it needs more work but thank you for sending such a detailed reply.
