After sometime without shooting some vacation days were the perfect time to take the camera out of the bag and breath some mountain air.
This image was taken on a small drive to a near trailhead at (aprox.) 1700m at Serra da Estrela mountain the tallest mountain on continental Portugal.
The clouds were moving realy fast due to some low altitude winds, making these clouds “climb” the mountain and creating a gorgeous view with the morning ligth.
I have some other images without that URC patch, but i think it balances with the ridge on the LLC, what’s your thougth on that?
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Single tripod shot at 1/160s, f/11, ISO50 and 258mm. PP to dodge the ligth on the center, create some contrast on the clouds and desaturate the URC patch.
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
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Really nice image. I would like to see the one without the blue sky in the URC. My eye goes right to the URC and distracts from the main subject. I also lose the sense of mystery that that great atmosphere provides.
It’s not just distracting, it really alters the mood and mystery of the photo. It would probably be easy to do some content aware fill and just continue the atmosphere into that area.
I think this image has a lot of interesting elements in it. The fog and mist create a wonderful atmosphere. The strong warm light striking the tops of the the ridges is simply gorgeous. The tiny hut or cabin (rock?) adds to the sense of mystery created by the fog, the viewers wonders what the cabin is doing there.
With that said, despite having all these interesting elements in play, I don’t think the composition really works that well, the dead center 50/50 horizon is not doing this image any favors. To me, the most interesting things in this image are all in the bottom half. IMO, the clouds in the sky are not strong enough to compare favorably to the fog below, and I don’t think you need this much sky to generate atmosphere, rather the fog does that.
I could see a crop of the sky to place more emphasis on the bottom half of the image as originally presented. Here is a rework of where I would take this image if it were mine.
This is on of the other images i shot at this spot, i dont like it as much as the posted inicialy because the clouds on the lower part are not as present on this image, even if the sky is more even.
@Ed_McGuirk i really like the crop you edited, maybe because i shooted this in 1:1 on camera i became a bit fixated to that layout.
So i re edited based on your crop and burned those clouds on the URC. I prefer this version to the 1:1 no doubt.
And it is a rock, at first i also thougth it was a cabin or small hut but it’s just a premium location rock ahah.
