Exposed for sky with intention of bringing up shadows. The golden hue while accurate didnt appeal. Figured see what could be done with b&w.
General housekeeping
crop to bushes bottom L & R to give natural vignette & make river & sky roughly equal size
selectively darken hedges to give a light dark pattern through the image
darken sky
darken hotspot
enhance light rays. Wanted to put one over the turbine but not too symmetrical
Could be brightened a bit more but that brings in a ton of noise
Brought into gimp and blitzed the v twigs. ( i know, I know - if its in the scene leave it be. But they’re really fugly, sorry, really dont help)
So whatcha think? Hit? Miss? Think you could do better? Actually no, just do different…
I got a real Tony Scott Tobacco filter vibe from this one, so gave it the CinemaScope crop to match.
I’ll just offer my 2c on this, but unless you’re shooting for a newspaper or doing product photography or something, no final image owes anything to the “reality” of the scene whenever and wherever the photograph was taken. Once the RAW files on your hard drive you work with the reality of what was captured on the sensor and nothing else.
To offer another 2c I think you’ve tried to stretch the image too far in your rendering. For me there’s not enough information in the foreground to try and bring it up, and even if there was there’s not enough contrast between those foreground layers to provide “enough” visual interest. I like how much detail you’ve extracted in the brightest parts of the clouds, but overall I think they lack contrast. In black and white especially contrast is everything.
If you want to make an image like that in the future it would have to be achieved through a different exposure in camera. Bracketing is an easy way to capture the information in the field, but personally I don’t like dealing with all that in post. Graduated density filters are still an irreplaceable piece of equipment in the landscape photographers kit!
I’ve tried a contrasty B&W. Sorry about the sloppy clone / heal job. Also, I don’t think I was able to do anything about the sun rays. 23-11-15_MG_6532_01.CR2.xmp (35.3 KB)
I started from a point of “what did it look like in person”, then proceeded to tweak. Then again, I wasn’t there, so what do I know?
I blued-up the foreground mist / haze a bit and even a little bit less in the upper cloud (plus a little desat). I adjusted shadow and mids in the foreground only to get a little more separation. I then played with WB to get a (presumably) more natural “direct-into-the-low-western-sun” haze. Also a slight vignette.
The 16:9 crop seemed to fit the subject matter and IMO the lighter strip at the very bottom was a distraction from the main subject.
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