Storms in gold

[Rudi van den Heever]

My wife and I took our last weekend break as a childless couple recently - our first born is making his way into this world at the end of November... We had a glorious 2 days in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in the Free State Province, South Africa...:tinysmile_shy_t:

I tried some "serious" landscape photography for the first time... This is one of the images taken with my trusty Canon 7D and 10-22mm lens with a circular polarizer filter...:2eyes2:

It is a blend of two images - one for the foreground and one for the sky. Resized for the web with Hougaard Malan's highlight diffusion action...

Be gentle with me ladies and gents...:e3


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[Don Railton]

Hi Rudi

I have no intentions of being gentle, I'm going to be brutally Honest...I Love it...! Well, I love the composition, the rays and the sweeping country side drawing the eye off to the right, round the image and back down the rays to the start. What I feel you might improve on is the colour, and in my opinion the blue sky patches should be a lot bluer than presented, especially since you used a cir pol filter. I think this would lift the image somewhat. The greens look a little muted also however I am not as convinced on this as the sky..

thanks for showing and good luck with the little tacker...

DON

[Rudi van den Heever]

Thanks Don! Appreciate the input and good wishes!:S3: I will have another look at those blues, but deliberately also kept thew sky "warm" so as to blend in with the foreground to avoid that "composite look"...:c3:

[Morkel Erasmus]

Rudi, great image here. Nicely composed, and not bad for a "try-out" as you put it.
I would have just liked to see this blended with another much darker exposure to get a better sunstar and not that blown blotch in the sky :e3.

I hear you on not wanting the "composite" look...but I feel one can do the warm/cold (yellow/blue) contrast to a degree with realism.

Here's a repost. I may have pushed some areas here, but just to give you an idea. One thing I noticed upfront and that was accentuated in the repost is the halos. There are halos all along the ridges and in the BG hazy mountains. You will see your mountaintops are darker than the rest of the mountains, a sort-of inverted halo. Anyway, I ran a cooling filter on the sky, ran some Nik Tonal Contrast on the FG, and dodged and burned some of the FG rocks and mountains a bit. I also tried to put some blues back into the sky, but a WB change in RAW would be best for this. I would even consider blending 2 images with different WB for the sky and FG?

[Don Railton]

Hi Rudi/ Morkel

I think the repost is a lot stronger...

DON

[Rachel Hollander]

Rudi - fabulous image and Morkel's repost has really taken it up a notch. Love the golden tones of the ground and the rays coming down. Well seen and composed.

TFS,
Rachel

P.S. Good luck with the birth of your first child.:cheers:

[Morkel Erasmus]

Thanks guys. Looking at my repost now (I did it at 1AM :Whoa!:) it seems the sky is a tad dark for the overall exposure, would lighten it a bit...:e3

[Rudi van den Heever]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

I have reworked this image and posted it in a new thread....:e3