Clouds, rays, a city and two people

[ShunENDO]

A photo I took when I was climbing Mt. Takao.

Any advice is welcome.
Especially re-touch process. I wanted to make clouds stand out, but maybe I went too crazy with it?


Climb And Clouds by ShunEndoPhotos, on Flickr


RAW File
IMG_4680.CR2 - 20.4 MB

[Donald]

Shun

I think one of the challenges with an image such as this is that you have a broad spectrum of light to try and capture.

You have exposed for the sky and that looks very good. But the result is that the two figures have been rendered very dark. I don't think any of the data has gone completely black, so you do have the chance to recover this and lighten up some of the very dark areas.

There are a number of ways you could do this, depending on your level of post-processing skill. I know you are just starting explore photography and will not, yet, have mastered many aspects of post-processing. One of the methods of dealing with this, for example, is to take a series of photographs in rapid succession at different exposure settings and then blend them together.

Perhaps one of the best ways of understanding this particular problem is to read this tutorial on camera metering. It explains how your camera sees things in a different way than we do.

[Geoff F]

For me, Shun, you have two choices when faced with a scene like this. Either concentrate on the scenery or the people, with the clouds etc as a backdrop.

Although the right arrangement of people in the foreground can sometimes work. For example, a couple holding hands while admiring the view.

But in this case the figures seem disjointed and offer nothing in the way of composition. In fact the left figure appears to be looking for something which he has just dropped.

I would be tempted to try cropping out the left figure, and half the railings at the bottom to restore balance.