I don't normally have a go at landscapes so this isn't up the standards I can see on this forum but thought I would share none the less. Any tips and advice would be appreciated
That is an impressive sky, and I think your choice of the panoramic format works for it. You avoided a common problem with such sky, namely blowing out the bright tones. (They verge on it, and you could tone down the brightest spots if you want by applying a mask and reducing “highlights” a little.)
Since you asked for feedback, I’ll share a few other observations.
It loos like you were photographing in an urban area, so those buildings and “towers” (chimneys? power poles?) are hard to avoid. If I were working with this image, at this point I’d likely crop the right side to eliminate that one thick, dark area intruding into the sky. I’d consider doing the same on the left and eliminating that intrusion, too. Neither would affect the sky much.
There are likely to be differences of opinion about the black area at the bottom of the frame. To me, it seems to dominate a bit more than necessary. Lighting it a bit could help perhaps. If you use Adobe software (and some others) you can let it select the sky and the foreground separately, and then you can adjust them as needed. The idea would be to bring back at least a bit of detail in the shadows without over-cooking the sky. (The crops I suggested above could also take out a bit of the dark area at the bottom edge, keeping the same aspect ratio.)
A more radical idea Is ot lose that panoramic format and instead crop radically, keeping only the part between that intrusion at the right edge and the other tall thing just to the left of center — crop to keep only the area between them.
But what a spectacular sky. Any of us would love to have that in our frame.
gdanmitchell wrote:
That is an impressive sky, and I think your choice of the panoramic format works for it. You avoided a common problem with such sky, namely blowing out the bright tones. (They verge on it, and you could tone down the brightest spots if you want by applying a mask and reducing “highlights” a little.)
Since you asked for feedback, I’ll share a few other observations.
It loos like you were photographing in an urban area, so those buildings and “towers” (chimneys? power poles?) are hard to avoid. If I were working with this image, at this point I’d likely crop the right side to eliminate that one thick, dark area intruding into the sky. I’d consider doing the same on the left and eliminating that intrusion, too. Neither would affect the sky much.
There are likely to be differences of opinion about the black area at the bottom of the frame. To me, it seems to dominate a bit more than necessary. Lighting it a bit could help perhaps. If you use Adobe software (and some others) you can let it select the sky and the foreground separately, and then you can adjust them as needed. The idea would be to bring back at least a bit of detail in the shadows without over-cooking the sky. (The crops I suggested above could also take out a bit of the dark area at the bottom edge, keeping the same aspect ratio.)
A more radical idea Is ot lose that panoramic format and instead crop radically, keeping only the part between that intrusion at the right edge and the other tall thing just to the left of center — crop to keep only the area between them.
But what a spectacular sky. Any of us would love to have that in our frame....Show more →
Thank you for your analysis, I am a bit clueless when it comes to this type of photo and I will try and incorporate this advice when I have another go. I do have access to adobe photoshop so will do a bit of experimentation to see if I can pull off what you suggest
Just in case anyone is interested I had a go at implementing the changes suggested and came up with the following I am a little rusty with photoshop so not entirely sure how to do some bits but this is definitely better
