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View Full Version : Storm over Lac Léman



Jerry van Dijk
07-01-2011, 03:00 PM
I've decided that my landscape photography definately needs upgrading, seeing all those wonderful images here. I usually hang out in the macro forum. Please don't hold back with your critiques. I'm here to learn.
Here's an image from last year, taken during a trip to Lausanne, Switzerland, situated at Lac Léman with some great views. This day, storms were rolling in through the mountains, giving some spectacular clouds.

Panasonic DMC-FZ18, leaning on quay wall, 11mm (66mm equivalent) ISO-100, f/7.1, 1/125 sec. ACR5.0/CS4 levels, brightness, recovery, sharpness, slight crop for composition.

Roman Kurywczak
07-02-2011, 09:41 AM
Hey Jerry,
Nice to see you branching out! You caught a dramatic sky and the exposure looks good on it but the FG suffered a bit because of the tonal range difference. A 3 stop soft edge split ND filter would have been great in this case to balance the image.....you would have probably had to push the ISO to 200 or 400 in order to use it and maintain enough SS. Using the filter would have allowed you to open up some of the mountains even more and the boats and water would have been opened up a bit too. Another option is to take 2 exposures.....and manually blend them to eek out the most tonal range in the scene. I prefer the split ND as it allows me to spend more time in the field....and less behind the computer!
As presented.....Comp looks pretty good but I would crop up from the bottom to above the duck in the water and see if you could eek out more detail from the mountains down and lighten it a bit......especially the boats for better image balance. I've debated the bouy too.....I'd probably get rid of it but I do know from macro......that you would prefer not to! Not too bad but a bit of tweaking willl bring this up a notch.