Gathering storm

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I borrowed a slide scanner recently and have scanned a lot of my old 35mm slides. I took this pic in 1984 in an area which was farmland but is now suburbia with my old Pentax MX (I only stopped using it 2 years ago after 25 years of faithful service).

I'm playing around with various different formats of frames, captions, signatures etc for printing. I would appreciate any comments, advice or examples of framing similar landscape photos.

Thanks,
Ollie

[LT7]

Nice picture, I like the colors and ominous rolling clouds. I just can't get my hands on it, but it seems like something is missing, maybe just looks a little too dark on my monitor here at work. I'll have to look at it from home.

LT

[oBSidian]

The shot is quite wonderful, though as LT says, it does seem rather dark. Maybe there are some different settings to play around with on the slide scanner? It IS a great shot, though.

As for frames, I'm no expert, but I think that given the dark and brooding nature of the shot, the bright white frame distracts. Maybe a more netural colour?

Best,

-Ben

[frenchy]

I'm with Obsidian on this one- the white frame seems to contrast too much with the darkness of the shot. I took a sample of colour from a brooding section of cloud and tried that. It's a very powerful image and the darker surround seems to lighten it a bit.

[oBSidian]

Frenchy:

The darker frame looks nice to me

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One technique I had read about with frames, and one that noah grey (http://www.noahgrey.com) uses, is that he's programmed into his webpage an algorithm that takes the average colour of all the pixels in the photo, makes that the main frame colour, and then has 2 thinner bands on the frame, one, say 25% lighter, the other 25% darker. It works pretty well for most photos, so you might try that in PS as a general rule.

Best,

-Ben

[SteveDak]

Great skies Ollie - prefer the dark border personally.

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Many thanks for everyone's constructive comments.

Ollie

[DomCotton]

Hi,

I myself am not a fan of this digital framing. I think if you want to print this to print it on a block canvas with no border, or maybe use a black matte but a real one - i just can't be sold on this element of digital framing!

By the way the shot is great that really impressive moody feeling is really nice. I have got an old Pentax SFX which I can't part with - takes a fantastic shot for 80's hardware...

Dom

[Hards80]

the darker frame really helps here.. it allows the eyes to see more of the detail.. i like the mood in this shot, very foreboding.. nicely done, 21 years ago!

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I had another play with framing (matte) colours along the lines of oBSidian's suggestions. I tried the "average colour" method (using the Filter-Blur-Average tool in PS), but the result was a fairly horrible mud brown colour, so I have gone with shades of grey instead. I think it's a definite improvement on the original white background.

Thanks again,
Ollie