Ominous Approaching

Ever notice how, sometimes, your photography may reflect the kind of

season that you are going through, the moment your photo was taken?

Of course life is flavored with a myriad of seasons, some beautiful,

maybe nearly euphoric. Some dark as the depths of night. Most

somewhere between these two extremes.

The approach: this image was taken in late July, after finishing my

Glacier National Park workshop. My assistant and I simply could not get

enough of the area (when can you ever get enough of Glacier NP?) so we

decided to stay in the park an extra week and spend an entire day 4-

wheeling every accessible dirt road we could find around the park. Just

as we were coming up an incredibly steep hill I caught this scene to my

left, abruptly stopped, locked in the parking brake, jumped out of my

vehicle running, while emphatically telling my assistant “there’s a photo

right there!“ Hand held, we shot immediately as the moment came and

went within a minute or two.

Techie stuff for those techy-ish:

This is a single raw file (shot to the right of the in camera histogram)

mainly finished in Camera Raw 8.2 / Lightroom 5.2 Raw (I often go back

and forth between the two interfaces, because I teach both). As always,

my somewhat innovative approach to Blending using the Layer Style

“Blend if” options was used for a wide variety of processes including (but

not limited to) blending for dynamic range, advanced B+W tonal control,

very subtle advanced dodging and burning, sharpening fall off of the

extreme darks and lights, and to pull the deep shadows of the land, a

little bit, out of complete silhouette (which I do not always believe is

necessary). Lastly, the image was sharpened for web using some

twists, turns and improvements on what some may call the “Adamus”

advanced pre-sharpening and then downsizing technique.

Canon 5D Mark2

Canon 24-105L

105mm

f/8 (sharpest f/stop)

1/1600 shutter (w stabilization on)

100 ISO

Feel free to Facebook me if you so desire. I generally share even more

gruesome details there.

Thanks for looking! 

Wonderful shot!  Wonderful dark and dramatic post-processing as well.

--Lannie

Great juxtaposition of light and dark in the composition and like minded metaphors for "ominous" in cloud and tree. Well seen.

Wow!!! This is just awesome. The image got me very interested, but now I am even more interested after reading your post processing...

Great shot, it is a 7 from me!

Regards, Line

Thank you so much for the technical details. Aside from those, this is a superb and very powerful image. One of a kind. Amazing situation and so carefully studied and taken advantage of to produce a masterpiece. Congratulations and thanks for sharing.

DG

I love clouds and sky, but this image and your generous information is astounding.  Beautiful art, Mark.  (Ansel would be taking notes)

Beautiful shot!

This is a very beautiful and powerful image. Congratulations on such fine work.

"Ansel would be taking notes!"

Wow thank you!!!! :)

This cloud is very fantastc and the dead tree contrasts very well with it.

Wow I won photo of the day here! :)

Cumulus a splendid summer clouds that is show here in maximum splendor and dry tree contour creates the magic of this composition,nothing more than admire this work.

Mark, I've liked this photo ever since it was first posted.  I can imagine the rush to capture what you were seeing in your photographic mind, because I know how rapidly these clouds change -- they literally boil.  Your processing of the cloud is superb.  I'm glad you were able to get to a position where all of the snag was backed by the cloud.  I don't know if it might have been possible, but I wish (after this shot) you could have kept running closer to the tree to make it smaller relative to the cloud, thereby emphasizing (via size) the power within the cloud.  If that had been possible, I might have given up on including the right edge of the cloud and instead concentrated solely on the tree relative to the cloud, with only the top edge of the cloud delineated.  Just some thoughts from me as an armchair photographer looking back in time.

I don't know which I like better -- cirrus or cumulus clouds.  Both have their own personalities, but few things that are relatively common in nature that depict the power of the landscape are these forming thunderheads.  Such nice work....a striking B&W.

Hi Mark,

Nature provides us all with beautiful scenes. 

It would have been nice this image posted larger, but it is fine the way it is here. 

Your detailed description has one flaw in it, that being that unless you have a poor copy of the Canon 24-105 mm L lens, the best f-stop is at F/4 , not f/8 for any focal length used in this design.

I know, because in my business of 47 years,  I have tested , studied, and serviced most lens produced world wide for very specific purposes, including normal photography conducted by amateurs and professionals. 

Best Regards, Mike

Fantastic! :)

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Well I too test lenses and my 24-105 definitely has the most discernible detail at f/8, without a doubt.

Stephen, great idea and that photo where I ran up on the cloud is coming! :)