Dockyard Cranes

[Manfred M]

I took this shot of some of the brightly coloured cranes along the docks in Klaipeda, Lithuania from across the Curonian Lagoon. The morning light was hitting them at an interesting angle, bringing out their bright colours.

[Shadowman]

Nice color capture.

[PRSearls]

That is a real pretty sky, Manfred. It's easy to blow out the highlights with this kind of light. Did you push up the clarity slider to get this look?

[NorthernFocus]

Wow. Yes the colors are really lit up. Is there a story behind the bright paint jobs?

[Manfred M]

That is a real pretty sky, Manfred. It's easy to blow out the highlights with this kind of light. Did you push up the clarity slider to get this look?

Very little clarity in use here Paul. I was trying to bring out the texture in the clouds, so I exposed to ensure that they came out well. In Camera Raw, I will push up the shadow detail and to some extent reduce the highlights and then in Photoshop add a gradient to bring out the clouds. With the overcast weather we are getting here, I wanted to bring out the beautiful textures in the clouds.

The whole area was somewhat back lit / side lit, so the whole bottom area including the foreground and middle ground have been heavily dodged to bring out the detail in those areas. The patterns of brightness are just where the light is hitting through holes in the clouds and that is what attracted me to shoot this scene in the first place.

[Manfred M]

Wow. Yes the colors are really lit up. Is there a story behind the bright paint jobs?

The cranes are painted in multiple colours and that is something that really struck me as we saw them in the distance, driving into town. The lighting conditions of the sun penetrating holes in the clouds really made some of the areas of paint shine, while the areas that were in shadow were more dull.

[Wavelength]

They look like Transformers: goodies and baddies...