Revealing my Intent: Image 4 "Sky on Fire"
As I was driving on an early afternoon in the Fall season, I noticed a thundercloud in the distance. It was astonishing how low it was and how powerful it looked. I pulled over into a small parking lot to set up the tripod and mount the Canon dslr with a 70-200mm F2.8L lens and took a few shots just in case it were to disappear quickly as it was moving along. But to my surprise it started bunching up and then the sun broke to reveal these powerful clouds as if they were 50 feet away. It was quite stunning, but I knew if I just kept shooting I might have the opportunity to do some editing at my Mac desktop.
While I liked the image I began working on the exposure and the shadows, contrast, and saturation along with sharpening after all the other tasks were completed. this one took less time than I thought it might, finishing it in a single session. But I had recently began using Affinity and opened the file again the next day. After an hour the results were beyond my wildest expectations. What caused me to be really pleased with Photoshop, found more pleased with Affinity. And here I am not comparing one photo editor with another, but the ease of use with Affinity allowed me to carry one finishing with the final image file being one of the very best 'even better than Mother Nature" images I've worked on to dat.
I can tell you that once I had edited this image and thought all was done, I could have easily closed it and moved onto to another, since it took so little time create. But after reopening it, I found a new level of energy and interest that propelled me to get the best I could out of that shot alongside the road. And not once since then have I seen such a cloud formation, and I travel that little backroad often. In fact this being Fall again I will continue to revisit that area, hoping for another rare opportunity.
That's the great thing about photography, and here I am speaking of a DSLR camera rather than a phone camera. The images that phones are producing are just as beautiful, when viewed on the phones screen, or a tablet/iPad, or desktop. The limitation is in achieving an image size large enough to produce a large print to fit on your wall, that prints the size you want, with the clarity that a DSLR and a quality lens will. Thus the reason I keep shooting with a camera for prints.
I hope I've given you some insight into what it is that inspires me to move from what Mother Nature allows, to what taking that image file and giving us, me and you, what we didn't get before editing. The results are sometimes astounding and powerful. I hope you take the time to jump to my link below or comment here on this post.
Next in this Series Red Rain on Fire
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