Storm over the Big Horns

[Wheeler McDougal Jr.]

Took this image about five weeks ago when visiting north central Wyoming. I am uncertain of the crop as I didn't know wether to take the foreground rocks out of the image or not. I would like your opinion please.

Nikon D3
28-70mm @ 35mm
35mm (in 35mm film)
1/640 sec, f/10
Mode: Av
Metering: Multi-segment
ISO: 200
White balance: Auto
Flash: Off
File size: 119MB
Image size: 4256 x 2832
Color space: AdobeRGB
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal
Color profile: Adobe RGB (1998)

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Wheeler,
I did the old "browser crop".........just scrolling till I could crop it to where I like it...........right now I am leaning to getting rid of them......to where the path/road starts.......and then take some off the top too..........to 1/4 inch above the far right cloud......I may just be into pano crops now....but it seems that any variety of crops would work.........including leaving the sky totally in. It is called "Big Sky Country " for a reason.

[Dean Ingwersen]

Agree with Roman's comments on removing the rocks in the foreground...but that sky is really nice and I'd be tempted to leave it as is. Do you have another with all of the rocks in view? I think them being cut in half is one of the reasons I'd remove them.

[Wheeler McDougal Jr.]

Dean-
No but I will crop the rocks out and leave the clouds the way they are and resubmit them in the morning. Thanks for your thoughts.

Mac

[Robert Amoruso]

Mac,

I would go with Roman's crop suggest - losing the rocks strengthens the image. As they are protruding into the image, they are a distracting. They would have made a nice FG compositional element however if include in whole.

Nice work placing the road as it works well as a leading line into the image. The transition from the green valley to the snow-capped mountains to the big sky clouds layers the image nicely and creates great depth.

[D. Robert Franz]

It seems the clouds is the main interest here so I would have included my sky and less FG which would have lost the rocks. Now you could have used a wider FL in the vertcal format and still included the FG rocks to anchor the image and still show a vast expanse of interesting clouds. I think that would have been my approach....

[Wheeler McDougal Jr.]

Thank you all for your thoughts. Here are the results of the croppings you all suggested. Let me know whst you think and which one you like the best. I think I like the pano Roman suggested. Thank you all again.
Mac

[Wheeler McDougal Jr.]

This is the sort of Pano