Interesting clouds in Iceland

dan_yell

dan_yell

Messages
1,467
Name
D
Edit My Images
Yes
Finally sitting down to edit some photos from Iceland the other week and trying to put some real time into learning about post processing. This was taken standing with my back to Seljalandsfoss waterfall, on the other side of the road. I took the photo with settings to expose the sky properly (allegedly) and tried to bring up the foreground in Lightroom. I am very inexperienced in both shooting and editing landscapes so wondered what the good burgers of the forum thought of this as I quite like it :) Any thoughts welcome, but do please be nice haha :) i am attempting it to look fairly natural, and not fakey mcfakerson.

The pinkish colour on the left was actually there, but I have no idea what it was. It was there all the time I was driving and i wondered if the gates of hell were opening somewhere, it was similar to what i saw in photos when the volcano was still active over in the East but obviously that wasn't happening, so not sure what it was. And the sky was that blue!

Cheers
Danielle

IMG_8104.jpg

A cropped version, as per Jerry's suggestion
IMG_8104b.jpg
 
Last edited:
I like that a lot. I think you could crop the foreground to exclude that footpath. It may form a lead-in line but it also adds a human element into the image which kind of jars a little.

For me the critical elements are those amazing swirling cirrus clouds, the blue sky, that straight black horizon and the silhouetted mountains. So I think I'd also try cropping the top 20 - 25% as well and have a look at that.
 
Thanks Jerry, I'll give that a go. I took some others of these clouds a bit further down the road so have those to work on too :) I do love a good cloud.

I've been a bit concerned about bringing up the dark foreground in LR and losing quality, last time I used this method but this looked better for some reason.
 
I wonder if they'll be any more takers to add to the discussion - roll up roll up people :)
 
*bump* would really appreciate some more critique on this, even insults are welcome lol.
 
Does putting 'critque' on the thread title help? I'm not generally an attention seeker :) just looking for feedback. will try using 'critque' in next photo i'm braver enough to post lol
 
Too late now but I would have taken a few steps to the left and used the animal track as a lead in line. I think that would still leave you the mountains in the distance. A few steps to the right would probably lose the path out of frame while keeping the ditch/stream as a lead in. Can only guess that the mist along the false horizon is actually mist and not the boundary between the sky and foreground - if it's the boundary, you need to sharpen up your selection technique!
 
Yeah its mist.

What do you mean by selection technique (excuse my dumbness)?
 
I think its a great shot, the distant mountains and the vast empty plain are what iceland is all about! Seljalandsfoss is a beautiful place.

I haven't really got anything to say that others haven't already mentioned, as I agree that the path (for me) is distracting and I like the river as the lead in/foreground focus. If you are ok with more post processing (I know some people aren't) then you could clone out the path? then you could keep more of the grass in the bottom of the the narrow crop format (which I do like more than the full frame version)? As it is the tiny bit of the river that is left in the shot jars with me for some reason, perhaps because you can't follow the line of the river the whole way through the shot as its interupted right in the center of the frame?

just my 2 cents as you asked for crit! =)
 
all crit welcome! i will have a go at the couple of things you suggest.

i dont remember consciously thinking about leading lines, so possibly got very lucky getting a decent shot out of it haha.
 
dan_yell said:
What do you mean by selection technique (excuse my dumbness)?
Click to expand...


Since it's mist rather than selection vagueness, you don't need to worry about it. I'm not a PP guru by any means but I know that things like horizons and skylines can be selected in several different ways, some giving a fairly sharp division along the selection line, others being a bit woolier/softer.

Have you tried converting this to B&W? I reckon the minimalism of the panoramic crop would lend itself to the conversion and it (the conversion) would reduce the impact of the stream (and might look like snow rather than water.)
 
Since you allow image edits, I've done a very quick conversion and after a little playing with sliders in PSE12's B&W conversion box, decided that their preset IR effect was as pleasing as anything I could manage - here it is. If you don't like it, please ask either me or the mod team to remove it and it'll be gone ASAP.

IMG_8104b.jpg
 
cant' say it floats my boat particualry Nod, I like the blue too much but I'm not offended by it so no need to remove it :)
 
i had a shot before it that was basically the same so i've worked on that file to do some changes. cloned/healed out the path so could have more of the river. previous shot was processed in older version of light room, so it may look slightly diff, am on trial of LR6 for another 2 weeks. i left more of the cloud at the top.

IMG_8103.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top