Dark Mountain

Photo taken from the top of the mountain "Storsola" of the Sylan Mountainous Plateau

in Norway. Pentax 67ii + SMC 45/4 + Ilford SFX200 + Lee no 25 red filter

Lovely high contrast, low key and moody shot here. I love the contrasting tones and textures between the sky and ground. Would not have thought of using a square crop, but it works well. 

Excellent composition with the attention going to the kind of crater with the snow patches. Good choice to include the sky also as the clouds add a lot of mood to the image.

I somehow do not relate this image to the SFX almost infrared film so its interesting to see what kind of effects you managed with the deep red filter on the lens also.

Bjorn,  This is a most interesting and picturesque volcano.   It the sky is well captured and complementary as an artistic element of contrast to the mountain.  For me, there should be more detail in the blackest areas of the mountain which would give more separation between the mountain and the lava foreground.  i think this would make the mountain even more dramatic and would add pop to the image.  I edited the image a bit to give you an idea. It could be fine tuned even more, but the edit illustrates my thought.  Of course, the verdict is yours.  Nice image.  I would not have taken the time with it unless I thought it was excellent.  Larry

Scott: This photo was shot with a Pentax 67ii medium format camera, and the native format of this camera is 6x7, or to be more precise 56mm x 70mm (not square).

Andres: When I went for my hike to this mountain summit, I used Fuji Provia 100F slide film, Ilford SFX200 semi-infrared film and also my Pentax K5 DSLR. Needless to say, the results were very different. The photo above is one of my favourites from the hike.

Larry: Thank you for taking an interest in my photo and also providing a visual representation of your critique. I understand your point about shadow detail, and your version demonstrates this well. One of my main editing goals were to render the mountain ridge very dark, almost like a silhouette, in order to achieve maximum contrast from the near-infrared film (Ilford SFX200). 

BTW: The Sylan mountainous plateau is an alpine mountain range, and the highest summit is "Storsylen" which is about 1762 meters above sealevel. Storsylen is the featured summit in the image above, and the snow below the summit is in fact a small glacier. I do not believe the crater has developed from volcanic activity.