Clouds Unleashed

[thkn777]

Finally,
after many dull days with a thick grey layer of clouds everywhere the first real sign of blue sky was yesterday evening, but I had no camera to take a photo. But tomorrow I saw this when I opened the kitchen door and looked into my backyard.



I just resized, adjusted the histogram and added a slight gauss deblur to make the very fine cloud structure more evident in the photo. No tricks. It really looked that way. Unfortunately this was all my 18mm lense could capture, the whole scenery was even more impressive.

Regards,
Th.

[Bynx]

Thats pretty cool. It looks like a zoom shot.

[Dave Smith]

How neat. Never saw clouds like that.



Thanks

[calr]

Awsome shot. It looks like a black hole sucking all the clouds down the drain!

Cal

[yesterday]

Very nice capture.

[thkn777]

Thanks for the nice comments!

I was trying to combine some shots for a panorama, but since I got guests over the Easter days I don't have the time for this at the moment, I can't even keep up with viewing all the cloud pictures.

:sad::sad:and I am a cloud fan!!!

[pj1974]

Hi there Thkn777,

I love the photo.. and as several other people have commented, it has a special "feel" and effect to it. I perceive something of movement and yes, of "expanse" in this photo. I'm glad you had an 18mm lens to catch it, I think it's a good perspective as it is.

Maybe an ultrawide (e.g. 10mm to xxmm) would have caught more of the flavour you're talking about... but I think you did well to use the portrait orientation to capture as much of the expanse of the sky in that way... as the clouds are going that way.

Thanks for sharing. Enjoy Easter & the time with your guests.

Paul

[Alan T]

pj1974 wrote:

I'm glad you had an 18mm lens to catch it, I think it's a good perspective as it is.

Maybe an ultrawide (e.g. 10mm to xxmm) would have caught more of the flavour you're talking about... but I think you did well to use the portrait orientation...

Another way of doing it is to do a quick panorama stitch.

I recommend starting with the freeware 'autostitch' (www.autostitch.net) from UBC authors. I have never (over 48yrs of cameras) owned anything wider than 36mm equiv., but it's so quick & easy now to do a stitch that I'm not bothered. Just use their defaults to start with, which gives a quick preview of whether your shots will stitch successfully.

There's lots about itin our friendly neighbourhood "Panoramas & stitching" forum where the estimable BillDrew is the guru. Just make sure there's plenty of overlap, and that you don't rotate the camera when panning between shots.

I love these radiating streamers of cloud, which are more parallel than we think, because of perspective over great distances (likebeing underneath hundreds-of-metres-gauge railway lines, many miles away, sometimes). I've used them in several of our 'challenges' over the years, some quite recently, so I'm pleased there are excellent new equivalent shots here right now, because I've not had much luck with clouds in this fortnight.

[thkn777]

@Alan and pj

Well - I already tried for a panorama stitch, I am familiar with the autostitch software, but it didn't came out very well - here's what I got with a "quick / default" RAW develop and stitch:



My main complaint is that the exposure wasn't set to a fixed value and thus this panorama doesn't represent what I really saw and it would need a lot of fiddling around to create something "decent". (left side too dark, that's the east side with the rising sun - and the right side too bright compared to that) These images were taken just before I had to go to work and I didn't have the time to really think about good setups, I just grabbed the camera and snapped some quick pictures.

Sorry for the confusion I caused, when I said I tried to combine some shots for a panomara technically this idea worked (see above) but I am not satisfied with the result.

@Alan

I saw that the new Autostitch software has really improved in producing panoramas from images taken with wide angle lenses, I had to use PTlens (or similar) to get the job done in the past. It's a real great piece of software. I'll remember to browse that other forum for tips on creating "natural" looking panoramas from those occasional/random shots where you just have your camera on "auto" settings.

Regards,
Th.

[musket]

Great shot and perspective, looks like clouds racing to a distant point.

................musket.