Always hard to tell in the early hours whether the clouds are going to build into thunderheads or just lay off the coast and tantalize the tourists into thinking it’s safe to go in the water…
Anything
D850, 17-35 Tokina @21mm, 6 shot handheld vertical exposures @ f/10, 1/1600, ISO 400
Processed in ACR and Photoshop. When I don’t have a tripod, I tend to shoot at higher shutter speeds because of my tremors.
Wow, Chris, this is the classic Florida pre-storm look. Awesome. I lived in Jacksonville for a year and saw lots of these types of clouds forming. Great shot all around. I like the pano too.
Hi Chris! That sure is a wonderful sky. It looks very painterly with all the cloud textures and how layered everything is. Your color and processing are very natural which is fantastic and leads to a wonderful viewing experience.
The two main things that stand out to me are the bright cloud on the far right edge, and the cloud formation and the structure in the water on the left side, effectively making book ends for the rest of the composition. In a way, this takes attention away from the central portion of the composition.
I’m not often one to recommend significant crops since doing so strays from your original vision of the scene, but since you shot this as a panoramic image with 6 stitched images, I also know that you have a lot of image to work with.
If this was mine, I would crop off the right and left sides so those bright and bold clouds on either side are no longer part of the image. When a dominant subject—especially a bright subject—is near the edge of a composition, it creates tension and that’s what is happening here. When those subjects are removed, the composition settles and is calmer. The clouds in the middle become the main subject. I would also crop a bit off the sky to help balance the relationship between the sky and the water. And finally, I would suggest taking a look at this photo in B&W with a red filter applied in photoshop. It pops right off the screen in a wonderful way and reminds me a bit of a Clyde Butcher image.
Chris,
The steely-blue color and contrasts here are striking. the clouds are rendered beautifully and I think capture what we’ve all seen and experienced at one point or another. The glassy, almost metalic reflections and ripples in the water are beautiful as well.
Can’t argue with Ben too much on having brighter objects on the edges, but an alternative to cropping might be to just try and mitigate the brightness. I used a combo of low opacity painting, burning and also adding a slight vignette to reduce that edge tension. IMHO, the strength of the pano really holds up well and I’d hate to lose anything. Even the one cloud on the left edge; originally it’s brightness and higher contrast was pulling the eye. Some small tweaks and maybe less so - of course all a matter of personal preference.
I can see this as a very large aluminum or acrylic print. Oh, and the b&w is a winner option too.
Lon
oh, my quick edits:
I compromised on both suggestions by doing slight over-painting, a bit less vignetting and by smaller crops with some cloning to keep the eye inside and not looking out.
I was going to suggest something similar here. The middle is lost in the current rendition.
