Storm Clouds

Exposure wise I find these are tricky, it's nice to get that detail in the clouds but hard to do this and the forground at the same time.
I'm trying to improve my composition on scenery type shots.
Any Comments?

Its a pretty cool shot, the clouds are tricky, but it appears you did a nice job. Love the contrast in the shot, green grass and the sky. Well done............Joe

I like it. The road leads your eye directly to the clouds. The grass makes a great contrast to the sky.

Actually its quite easy if you are using ND Grad filters,here is an example...

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I don't have any ND filters as yet but have been thinking of getting one. Now if I buy a 77mm one it will suit both the 24-105 and the 10-22 which is usefull.

This time I used curves to lighten the whole image, then applied a layer mask and brushed the mask onto the clouds. I used a 50% opacity black brush and a wacom tablet to have more control over the mask. This is something I got out of Masking & Compositing by Katrin Eismann, an excellent book. In the book she used a the gradient tool to do something simular. The mask allows you to control where the curves to have no effect so I could "beld back" the dark clouds into the final image.

So in essence the dark area's of the clouds are untouched while the remainder was lighted a little to bring out the foreground.

I did consider a couple of different exposures to do all of this and then blend these in PS but I was running short of time as the weather was closing in.