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Congratulations to Mark Metternich for winning Feature Thread of the Week with 4 votes - View Previous Winners
Very intensely watching all the online weather reports, radar, web cams… I decided to chase three severe thunderstorm cells to Crater Lake three days in a row. In 13 years of doing landscape photography full time I don’t know if I have ever witnessed such a spectacular show of light or as much lightening! On this evening, I took 2150 images in about an hour and a half, using two cameras, running back and forth between them. The Ranger next to me said that in 12 years of working at Crater Lake, hiking daily and often hiking the rim on his days off, he had never seen anything like it.
This is a single shot with the Sony A7R and the Canon 14mmL2. One of the hardest things about processing the image was to take the colors that were severely unrealistic to the eye, as well as unrealistic in the initial Raw default settings, and dummy them down, and settle on a point where they would be more believable but not lose the original craziness. I decided to attempt to strike a balance between the ridiculousness of the light we saw that night (which runs the risk of turning some people off) and a more neutral realistic version. We can never please everyone but with some critical help I ended up settling on this version.
I have some AWESOME encouraging photographer friends to thank considerably for critical feedback in fine tuning the image over the last few days. HUGE thanks and a great debt of gratitude go out to:
Ted Gore, Alex Noriega (these guys are savant freaks when it comes to post production!) Peter Cosken, Andrew Mitchell, Erin Babnik (she is a guru too!) Ryan Engstrom, Brain Adelberg (Brian rocks!) Micheal Shaniblum, Rob Lafreniere, Scott Smorra, Majeed Badizadegan, Max Vuong, TJ (monster work ethic) Thorn, David Richer, Dylan Toh, Paul Rojas, Justin Poe, Terrence Lee, Paul Bowman, Nick Diggins and Enrico Fossati.
As always feel free to Facbook my public page. I share a lot of extra stuff there.
Amazing Shot, for so many reasons. Great work, though i know for you, it is your life and your passion.
Am I the only one that sees eyes looking at me, from inside the top of the rainbow?
You have MANY amazing images in your years of building your portfolio but IMO, this has to be one of your best ever!! The hard work, the dodging of lightning bolts and the chasing of the storms REALLY paid off!! This may be one of the ones I buy from you and frame for my wall!!
Killer shot Mark! I know that you paid careful attention to the saturation to keep it in the realm of plausible reality, but I think you should bump the saturation back up a bit. I would expect those sunlit clouds to be a bolder color, as well as the colors in the rainbow. I certainly wouldn't go over the top, but I feel like you approached this one with perhaps too much restraint when it comes to color.
The time spent conceptualizing such a photo, the time spent capturing such photo and the time spent producing such a photo are all worthwhile when the final product is this good.
Lovely, Mark. To be there is one thing. To capture elegantly is another.
Ben Horne wrote:
Killer shot Mark! I know that you paid careful attention to the saturation to keep it in the realm of plausible reality, but I think you should bump the saturation back up a bit. I would expect those sunlit clouds to be a bolder color, as well as the colors in the rainbow. I certainly wouldn't go over the top, but I feel like you approached this one with perhaps too much restraint when it comes to color.
I agree. I know a lot of guys were pushing you away from color, because they couldn't believe how vibrant the colors could be. But thunderstorm light has a tendency to be really intense-- and sadly, I found myself alone beating that "color drum".
But you know my thoughts on this already. And like I said, when a shot is this good, there is quite a bit of room in the realm of subjective. My personal taste would be to see more saturation.
Ben Horne wrote:
Killer shot Mark! I know that you paid careful attention to the saturation to keep it in the realm of plausible reality, but I think you should bump the saturation back up a bit. I would expect those sunlit clouds to be a bolder color, as well as the colors in the rainbow. I certainly wouldn't go over the top, but I feel like you approached this one with perhaps too much restraint when it comes to color.
Hi Ben! Thank you very much for taking the time to give me feedback! You are one of my very favorite photographers so I respect your feedback and taste in images. As I said above:
"One of the hardest things about processing the image was to take the colors that were severely unrealistic to the eye, as well as unrealistic in the initial Raw default settings, and dummy them down, and settle on a point where they would be more believable but not lose the original craziness. I decided to attempt to strike a balance between the ridiculousness of the light we saw that night (which runs the risk of turning some people off) and a more neutral realistic version. We can never please everyone but with some critical help I ended up settling on this version."...Show more →
I think I struck a very good balance. At least on my calibrated Dell U2413 Wide Gamut monitor. And the feedback I decided to get from the folks listed above really helped a ton too. I did not want the purist types screaming "not realistic!" or "over processed!" I also wanted to do what I saw with my eyes justice. So, this is where I arrived. Even after thinking about it more, I am really happy with it. It will be a simple taste issue. Lousy uncalibrated monitors might play into it as well for some too... As far as the 50 inch Fuji Flex / Acrylic Mount goes (my first print of this coming soon) it will be super gloss so I will be OK with the colors popping out under gallery lighting...
MajeedB wrote:
Lovely, Mark. To be there is one thing. To capture elegantly is another.
I agree. I know a lot of guys were pushing you away from color, because they couldn't believe how vibrant the colors could be. But thunderstorm light has a tendency to be really intense-- and sadly, I found myself alone beating that "color drum".
But you know my thoughts on this already. And like I said, when a shot is this good, there is quite a bit of room in the realm of subjective. My personal taste would be to see more saturation.
Thank you Majeed! You gave me some great feedback that I am very thankful for! I know some wanted it more saturated, some wanted it less... If I had it at the level you liked, it would have turned off a lot of Photoshop police. And if I dummied the purple down as low as some others wanted it, it would have lost that original warmth and magenta... Actually you helped it come back to this point (from that too green, too cyan, too neutral version). Again, I like were it arrived taking everyone's considerations into strong account as well as my memory of what it looked like. As I told Ben, I am very happy with the balance I struck and OK with some folks wanting more color. But it certainly does not look tame to me!
sapper_6 wrote:
would love to see what came out of the camera
The folks in the above list can attest to the fact it looked bad and needed a lot of corrections!
Well, i knew this camera in the right hand can do a lot, it is not only about the photographer skill, but also the capability of the camera with DR and resolution and rendering colors or whatever, so if both are high quality then definitely the results are outstanding.
Nice work.
As far as the 50 inch Fuji Flex / Acrylic Mount goes (my first print of this coming soon) it will be super gloss so I will be OK with the colors popping out under gallery lighting...