Fingers of God

[Stefan Jonsson]

Early morning in the Ngorongorocrater, Tanzania.
Instead of a red sunrise it was windy and cloudy, until the sun broke through...
Just me and the swallows were awake.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3069/3030893840_561a615367_o.jpg

Canon Eos 5D, EF 100/2,8@f/13, 1/45 sec, ISO 200, Cokin-Z grad ND medium

[Robert Amoruso]

Stefan,

Welcome to BPN and the Landscape forum. Nice first post. Very moody and brooding. I like the composition. The cropping of the trees at the bottom works well with their shape, a curve the accepts the rays of heaven.

I do notice a halo around the trees. A processing artifact perhaps? You could try boosting the overall brightness of the image using a curves adjustment and then create a mask and paint in black over those areas that should remain darker. I think I would like to see the trees with more detail for example.

Looking forward to seeing more of your images.

[Stefan Jonsson]

thank you for your words, I`ll look at the details...

[Rene Quenneville]

Welcome, great picture. Very good camera angle and framing. I am not sure if the bird adds or distracts for the composition.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Stefan,
Welcome to the forum! I love the "god " rays and agree with Rene.......not sure the bird adds either........but I would work a bit on maybe lightening the FG with a screen blend layer (Robert has it in the tutorial at the top of the page under "contrast and tonal range tweaks"). Besides the PP tweaks......very nicely composed and very dramatic lighting!

[José Rodríguez]

Nice one Steffan. I know what a difference a cloudy sunrise makes. To be awake early is just terrible for me. But I can see you could get advantage on that day....
You say you used a nd grad filter, and I'm trying to figure out, on what heigth does the effect begin..
Welcome :-)