Page 1 of 1

Cloud nebulas

Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 9:04 pm
by Hawk
Clouds are quite hard subject for photographers in my opinion. They may look very good on landscape shots, but when no piece of land is visible they look bland. Today I’ve tried to show that clouds may be used as primary subject – you just need to show them in a bit unusual way. You’ll have to judge yourself if I succeeded or not :-)

Image

Image

P.S. These are my first published images from Sony a700 which I've bought recently :D

Re: Cloud nebulas

Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 12:35 am
by Juanito200
Hi Hawk- congrats on the new a700!
I like the post processing concept here. It is a great idea to turn ordinary Earth-bound clouds into nebulae.
I think that on the first shot, the darkness is a little too intrusive on the photo, especially at the top. It leaves little room for the detail in the middle. I like the second one a little better because you see more cloud detail overall. (Also, I think that seeing them in a smaller size loses some impact.) All in all pretty cool. What program did you use to do this with? Anyway my two cents, John

Re: Cloud nebulas

Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:09 am
by Hawk
Juanito200 wrote:Hi Hawk- congrats on the new a700!
I like the post processing concept here. It is a great idea to turn ordinary Earth-bound clouds into nebulae.
I think that on the first shot, the darkness is a little too intrusive on the photo, especially at the top. It leaves little room for the detail in the middle. I like the second one a little better because you see more cloud detail overall. (Also, I think that seeing them in a smaller size loses some impact.) All in all pretty cool. What program did you use to do this with? Anyway my two cents, John
Thanks John!

I agree that #1 has too much dark areas, but for me thats what make it look more like nebula telescope shot ;-)

As for post processing I use Photoshop CS3 for all my work, but changes on above picture were quite small - adjusted levels to get rid of blueish cast in dark areas, adjusted highlights/midtones/shadows contrast to emphasize cloud details, bumped saturation to emphasize colors and give images more punch.

Re: Cloud nebulas

Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 1:16 am
by Juanito200
Hawk- I really do love the concept.. I got what you were going for when I first saw them. I've had a telescope since I was a kid, but nebulae are hard to see with the naked eye. The bottom of that first shot reminds me of pictures of the Horsehead nebula I have seen.. Very cool idea indeed,

Re: Cloud nebulas

Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 5:37 am
by KevinBarrett
Very pretty stuff!