CS #458 - Head in the Clouds

[LyndeeLoo]

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Morning clouds from my deck at Lake Arrowhead, CA. (Had to jump thru a lot of hoops to do this just using my D750 wifi and iPad. )

That first one is stunning! Very dramatic!

 

[LyndeeLoo]

Lori, I haven't been posting much here lately, but when I saw your "cloud" theme, I was intrigued by the challenge, since i usually find my cloud shots very boring (but then I usually don't put much into them). Last weekend our weather was grey and featureless here in Western Mass, but the weatherman told me a storm front was coming through on Tuesday, so I took my gear along while running some errands. Fortunately, I caught the cumulus build up, and was done by the time the rain started. It continues as I sit here struggling with pbase.com, which decided it didn't like my cloud photos at all. But I finally got them up, and so here are the results.

The first shot put an orchard apple tree up front. I liked the way the cloud shape mimicked the tree.

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The second shot was while I was parked at a friends house, parked under a canopy of trees to keep the hot sun off the car. So, of course .......

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In addition to the framing, I liked the way the trees filtering the sun created slight "rays" that blended with the clouds.

By this time, the budding thunderheads had risen to enormous height. when I saw this old shack on a farmer's property, I knew I had to get the shack in the photo, as well as the enormous cloud. I think it works .... what do you think? I'm going to try a black and white conversion on this one, I think.

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Here is another look at those same clouds, from out on the road.

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These next two shots are variations on the same theme; I need your advice and opinions on them. The clouds over the mountain range converged on a bright, uncovered piece of sky in the distance, and I wanted to use the landscape to frame it.

The first shot used the distortion of the barn and the road to point to the light, which is in the center. I think it works okay, but is not great.

The second shot lacks drama, and the light is no longer centered due to the need to get the barn out of the shot (it was starting to rain at this point and I knew I didn't have much more time to shoot). But I kind of like how the mow-border, the road, the wires, and the sky and cloud strata point out the convergence all the way across the frame to the light near the right border.

I really do look forward to your thoughts on these two, including whether I just should forget them completely.

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I've enjoyed the variations I've seen in the photos so far. It is really true - no cloud looks alike!

Harry, you may not post often, but when you do, you certainly post some fine photos! They are all lovely, but my favorite is the second one. I love dilapidated buildings! Hope you've been doing well!

 

[LyndeeLoo]

I think maybe I've got the drama I was seeking on the last shot, inspired by some of the B&W here. See what you think:

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I did this from the NEF in DxO 10, using the drop-in Film Pack. Ended up choosing Afga Scala 200x as the main "look", then toned it down to 80% intensity, and added a bit of Ilford Delta 100 grain, which adds nothing here, but would if blown up in size.

Very, very nice, and I love the contrast in this one, Harry!

 

[LyndeeLoo]

I also went back into DxO to take advantage of one of its features not available in NX2 to see if I could empasize the sun's rays in picture #2. Here is the result:

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The sun's rays peaking out from behind the trees makes for a very pleasing image. Nice!

 

[LyndeeLoo]

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Haven't really done any HDR/bracketed shots before. Fun thing to learn. Definitely like Photomatix way better than LR for HDR. This is sunset over Lake Arrowhead mountains.

This is beautiful. It's almost as though the sky is on fire!

 

[spice3d]

Don't want to inundate this thread with individual thank you's, so I'll just say thank you all for the compliments

I will have to say this thread gave me the nudge to try bracketing/HDR, so a big thanks to Fiveby!

 

[dhalloxf]

I really like the pano, Dave, and boy - look at all those cloud formations!

Thank you Lyndee.

 

[dhalloxf]

Once again, Dave, a fine set of images. In the second shot, it almost looks as though it was getting ready to rain!

Thanks Lyndee.

 

[Fiveby]

Don't want to inundate this thread with individual thank you's, so I'll just say thank you all for the compliments

I will have to say this thread gave me the nudge to try bracketing/HDR, so a big thanks to Fiveby!

Glad I could be of help...

 

[Bob Coutant]

Clouds!! I found clouds!!!!

Not my finest work, but I grabbed the image before the clouds could get away from me:

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Lyndee, I like the composition for this one, with the path of the sky/clouds between the trees echoing the "path" on the ground.

 

[ArtO]

Thanks for hosting this terrific CS Lori

A lot of creative and interesting images

Thanks to everyone for their contributions.

Come on over and join us for this week's

CS#459 "Motion" hosted but Gordo​

 

[fishbio]

Wow - your sky is exactly like a grey card! You must have had one heck of a storm!

re storm: we did. some areas of the city received 3" in an hour with lots of local flooding and many power outages.

Larry

 

[Bob Coutant]

Thanks for the challenge, Lori. I had another idea, but the weather wouldn't cooperate [Come to think of it, the same thing might work for Gordon's new theme.]

 

[LyndeeLoo]

Lyndee, I like the composition for this one, with the path of the sky/clouds between the trees echoing the "path" on the ground.

Thanks, Bob!

 

[LyndeeLoo]

Thank you so much, Lori, for this week's CS - it was great!

 

[NEF Said]

Thanks for hosting Lori. Even though I couldn't participate, I enjoyed the shots by everyone.

 

[Fiveby]

I am glad everyone enjoyed it so much...