Moments Before The Rain

My sincerest thanks to Laurent Baig who have me some very helpful

criticism of my first version of this photo.

 

I went back and looked at what I had done to it, and I was

embarrassed. It looked like it had been photoshopped by a 10-year-old

who had been given a computer as therapy for a nerve disease.

 

I won't try to say that it looks a lot better now, but at least I gave

it a second try.

 

I welcome any-and-all criticisms or suggestions for improvement.

I do think this is much better; and the colors more natural appearing. I also like the hint of the rising sun coming up over the extreme left edge of the ridgeline. I'd have 'scram-booched' outa here too, in the face of this storm. Very dynamic and moody. Keep up the good work, Amigo; I like your style. Cheers! Chris

Thanks Chris. I just realized that there's a blue/purple patch in the clouds. I'm not sure why. I didn't color them separately. I'll work on it at lunch time.

While you're looking at it again; take a close look at the face of Elephant Head; while it may be my monitor (I'm not at home); there looks to be slight olive-greenish cast to the rock. By the way, I really like this composition; it has strong elements throughout; especially the foreground agave. Cheers! Chris

I think this is a very good composition, the sky is awesome and the contrast is great.

I like the mood in this picture, I can feel before the rain air .

very well done !

I don't see any purple patch ...

Chris, that face of Elephant Rock does have large patches that are yellow/green. They REALLY stand out on sunny afternoons when the land is brighly illuminated but that face is in shadow. The last time we were there, my children innocently asked me if someone had painted it like that. I'd be interested to know what minerals make it that color. In this picture it kinda looks like a coloring mistake, but it actually is a feature of the rock there.

Daniel, it's probably lichen covering the rock that gives it that color. A lot of backcountry granite in the area has that yellow-green lichen on it. The reef of rock on the north side of Mt Lemmon is another example.

This is much more natural looking, though I didn't mean anything bad with your previous example. There's nothing wrong with pumping up color, by any means, I certainly do it. You simply need to find your style and taste for it. This is a beautiful image and I'm looking forward to seeing your processing skills grow.

Laurent, I took your suggestion in the best possible way, and I sincerely appreciated your input. I am such a newbie to this genre that I feel like I'm groping around in the dark for a style. I don't even really have a workflow for processing these yet. I'm just dinking around. Your suggestion sent me off in a different direction, and I like the results much more. As a learning experience (and just for fun) I believe I'm going to re-process all my other landscapes and see what results I get.