Ndutu thunderhead.

[Marc Mol]

It's been far too long since I posted in landscapes and need to do more.

We found this iconic thunderhead whilst making our way back to Ndutu/Serengeti last month after witnessing an amazing wild dog hunt, the tops of this formation (where's there's a hint of cyan) had a beautiful pearlescent/rainbow glow that hasn't been replicated in the RAW file,
most dissappointing and had never seen anything like it in all my 56 years, ....and no I hadn't even had my first beer yet , perhaps someone with an expertise in meteorology maybe able to explain this phenomenon? And even stranger that it didn't show in the RAW file?



D700 24-70 f/2.8 1/320s f/14 ISO800@ 24mm. F/F. Curves, levels, TK masking with slight cloud sharpening, in ACR, PS/CC '14.

C & C most welcome

Cheers
Marc

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Marc, that sure is an impressive thunderhead...I love that you can see the falling rain in the distance...I am playing with thought that the foreground could go a smidge brighter, let's see what the others think?

[Dvir Barkay]

Really nice, agree that the foreground could use a bit of brightening. Too bad about the colors at the top of the cloud not showing up, I often find that a lot of stuff that you eyes sees is not recorded. Take light rays, I often find that they can often disappear in an image when you could see them plainly with your eyes.

[Marc Mol]

Thanks Andrew & Dvir

...I am playing with thought that the foreground could go a smidge brighter, let's see what the others think?

Really nice, agree that the foreground could use a bit of brightening.

I can't disagree, but I just didn't want to get into the realms of a HDR, it's a fine balance I guess.

[Diane Miller]

Spectacular and beautiful! Did you try the different camera Profiles (in the Camera Calibration tab) to see if one brought out those colors? Temp and Tint could be a factor, and pulling the Highlights slider left might help. A few things to juggle but possibilities are there. If you can find a hint of the color, then Vibrance might help, but maybe necessary to go to HSL then and tame the blues.

[Marc Mol]

Spectacular and beautiful! Did you try the different camera Profiles (in the Camera Calibration tab) to see if one brought out those colors? Temp and Tint could be a factor, and pulling the Highlights slider left might help. A few things to juggle but possibilities are there. If you can find a hint of the color, then Vibrance might help, but maybe necessary to go to HSL then and tame the blues.

Thanks Diane, I shall investigate the CC tab, I had forgotten that, a good tip.

[Gabriela Plesea]

Hello Marc!

Whew, I must pop in here more, what a nice surprise - I did not know you did landscapes:) This is just lovely, beautiful colours, very dramatic, enjoyed viewing, very much!

Kind regards,

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice one here Marc, the simplicity of the FG lets you focus fully on the impressive clouds/storm.
I would have thought the rainbow glow could be cut out by a polariser but it seems you didn't use one here?

[Don Lacy]

Nice strong and dramatic image, I like the comp with the small amount of land to anchor the image and wonderful sweep of the clouds.

[Mike Hitchen]

a lovely compositoin Marc.

Regards the 'rainbow' colouring, there is a siilar effect called 'sundogs' where the sun shines through ice crystals in the air and has a rainbow pattern around the sun - if those are high-altitude clouds it may be something similar. Sundogs can be a pig to capture in a photo so I am not surprised you were not able to capture it here: maybe in this case the problem is that the rainbow colours are so faint against the background white of the cloud that if you wanted to get the colours you would have to underexpose so far the foreground would be massively underexposed. Bracketing of some sort may be the answer.