Almost looks like the emergence of one of those city destroyers from Independence Day.

Heh, oh yeah. Where's Will Smith when you need him?

I really love sections of this, but the whole HDR treatment... I dunno. HDR works great sometimes but I dunno if it's working for this cloudscape! What does it look like without it?

Not very interesting. My camera can't handle exposures like this without either blown highlights or black shadows, so there's no other way to capture the setting as I saw it at the time. I could have processed a bit less punchier but that's just the choice I made when I was putting it together. I may go back and try different things. It looked neat in B&W and made the 'HDR effect' less apparent as well.

I fucked around with this in Photoshop a bit to see what was going on. It's a really good photo, but yeah, HDR can be so persnickety with making things look good. They need a buttload of touching up afterward to make them look exceptional, which is why I'm kind of disinclined to use them.

http://www.phthaloblues.com/mystery.....scape-bluh.jpg

So the building and fence in the bottom right... was way too bright blue, and was taking a lot of attention away. I added a blurred out bit of green (by sampling the field color) and set the layer to hard light. I have it on full in this JPG but it's not GREAT... reducing it to ~%70 looks okay.

The sharpness of the clouds is fantastic here, especially the cumulus areas in the middle and on the right. So I copied the photo to a different layer set to hard light and did a high pass filter on it. High pass is, like, a fucking lifesaver for this kind of image. But it basically does the same thing as HDR, it just adds contrast to edges. And it was making everything on the ground stick out way too much, so I masked it out to reduce the contrast, because what you wanna be looking at are those fucking gorgeous CLOUDS, man.

Then the light areas of sky around the edge of the cloud... they reduce the luminosity of the cloud's interior. So I did a subtle red gradient coming down from the top and then liquified it partly out of the way. There are actually two layers of red, both set to color burn. I added a bit more red to the tips of the cumulus clouds in the foreground to make them look really saucy. Now the lightest, warmest points are are INSIDE the cloud, where they belong.

Fuck, I never do unwarranted critiques like this. I'm sorry! It's just a great photo and it is just begging for a bit of extra umph.

Wow, some great tips in there! Thanks a lot. I took your suggestions and applied them to my photo (uploaded the new version), though I went for a slightly less intense application. I like the more natural color which is true to the scene I saw but it's hard to get that right if you weren't actually there.

I never knew you were into photography as well. Do you have it online anywhere? I was actually completely oblivious to the high pass filter trick for sharpening images. Nice.

Thanks again for the advice. Critiques are never unwarranted. :)

BTW I uploaded a slightly less vibrant version because I realized it was a little too blown out. CTRL-F5 if you didn't see it.

that's so very awesome :)

Thanks.

I think the HDR looks great. I was going to ask if that's what you did. I wish I had a high res version of this for my desktop. I'd use it on my dual screens. Also- camera. What do you use?

I could send you one if you want. The original is huge. What resolution do you need?

It's shot with my Canon XS & 18-55 EF-S.

OH AWESOME! I need somewhere around 2880 x 900 pixels for the dual screen. It doesn't matter if it's not exactly right (if the edges get trimmed a bit). My email is kfitzpat@c.ringling.edu.

I really really appreciate it!

Sent. :)

...seriously... thank you... this is amazing...

Could you get it to 1680x1050? My widescreen monitor keeps stretching the original to hell.

Stunning photo :)

Quite spectacular... weather in general is something I find really quite interesting. Been watching that "Storm-chasers" program on the Discovery channel quite a bit. Sadly we don't get the opportunity to see many big storm-cells like this build up as the terrain here doesn't support it.

That is stunning. You don't get storms like this this side of the Atlantic.

btw you should share that photo with these guys :) http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/

Woah dude, that practically looks like a galaxy in outer space. You are truly privileged to have witnessed such a sight.
Mother nature just decided to give you a gift :)

God it looks like a photomanipulation not like a real shot :D It's just unbelievable.

That looks beautiful. I showed it my older sister whose an artist much better than me, and she stopped and stared. Glorious photo you took, there. I'm curious, where was this taken, approximately?

About 2 minutes from my house in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

I thought it was drawn; looking at the thumbnail, I was going to say THAT'S AMAZING! Truly incredible sight, lucky you!

Insane!

WOW, what a cloud! and what an amazing shot!
HDR I presume?

Yup, HDR. :)

Very nice this really deserves a fav <3

Bloody. Hell. Wow. Just wow. That's phenomenal!

The thumbnail doesn't given an impression of such an amazing image behind it!

That is stunning, I'd love to see clouds come in like that :D

Wow, fantastic capture! It looks like an explosion. Where was this taken?

In a park quite close to my house in Winnipeg.

This is ABSOLUTELY gorgeous. I love the edits you made.

Storms are such beautiful things.

Thank you! I actually didn't even edit it much, I tried to keep it close to how it actually looked. :)

I am aghast, this is INCREDIBLE.

Thank you! It was particularly incredible in person.

Wow, this has got to be one of the most incredible skys I have ever seen! The HDR really brings out the contrast detail.

Amazing photo ^.=.^

Thanks a lot! I hope this summer brings some equally beautiful storms to us.

I envy you... you got to see this in person. No matter the quality of a camera, nothing can beat seeing stuff like this in real life. You did an amazing job capturing this though, in my opinion. Absolutely stunning. Per chance, is there a larger version? This is the kind of thing I like to make desktops of.

Thanks for your comments! It was quite a sight to see, that's for sure. I literally ran back to my house to grab my camera in order to capture it in time. The clouds were changing very rapidly and the sun was just setting at the exact right time.


Here's a bigger version for ya. http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/68.....pcombinewp.jpg

Thank you! Again, amazing shot!